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I have an ancient Mac program called MiniCAD 7 which runs on Mac System 7.1 and would like to operate this program on my new MacBook Pro laptop that has the OSX operating system. Also I have floppy discs with MiniCAD 7 drawings on them which I would like to access.

How can I run this program and access these files?

user
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Bob
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2 Answers2

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If you encounter crashes running the software in SheepShaver/Basilisk, you might want to try a Mac II build of Mini vMac. I've seen this work better with picky software that requires System 7.1.

If your floppies are High Density (1.44mb) ones, they'll work in a regular PC USB floppy drive. You can connect one to your MacBook, and use the Disk Utility software included with Mac OS X to create read/write disk images of them that will work in an emulator.

Giacomo1968
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rakslice
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  • To get downloaded files into Mini vMac, you can use their handy importFl utility http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/importfl/index.html which, when it is running, treats drag-and-dropped files as entire files to save rather than disk images. – rakslice Jan 10 '18 at 02:59
  • Also if you need to deal with Stuffit archives, you can use importFl to import a MacBinary .bin version of Stuffit Expander (e.g. http://www.gryphel.com/d/sw/archive/stuffexp/c/stuffit_expander_55.bin) and then use their binUnpk utility (http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/binunpk/) to decode the .bin file to an Installer you can run. – rakslice Jan 10 '18 at 03:04
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Ironically, the fact that you are running modern Apple hardware and an Apple OS does not help you any. Before Apple moved to x86 they supported, and shipped, machines running both OS X and OS 9.

You have the issue of having to emulate a 68K/PPC processor, on top of needing a license/installation media for MacOS 7.

SheepShaver will definitely get the job done, but you still need to acquire a copy of MacOS 7 from somewhere to use it. eBay might be your best bet, unless you actually own an old Mac.

Andon M. Coleman
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  • An additional problem. The emulator that did exist is no longer supported by Apple and not in the more recent versions of OS X. – Ramhound May 24 '14 at 01:39
  • @Ramhound What you are thinking of is actually completely separate and unnecessary; Rosetta was actually so that you could run PPC MachO OS X binaries on OS X beginning with 10.4 and it was not an emulator, but rather a binary translator. Sheep Shaver is a Universal binary (contains both PPC and x86 executable), Sheep Shaver contains the necessary emulation for OS 7 to run in its x86 binary. – Andon M. Coleman May 24 '14 at 01:45
  • I just realized that my entire thought process was down Highway 87 instead of Interstate 23. – Ramhound May 24 '14 at 01:47