It is a good idea to rename the disks inside the emulated machine, instead of leaving the default name “untitled”. Because if two different mounted disks have the same name, some programs can become confused. (The name of the disk which you see in the emulated machine is completely separate from the name of the disk image file).

The “mfs” folder contains disk images in the MFS format (Macintosh File System). All the other disk images in Blanks are in “HFS” format (Hierarchical File System), the standard for a Macintosh Plus. MFS preceded HFS. The original Macintosh 128K and 512K can only use MFS and not HFS. A Macintosh Plus can use either.

There are several questions to ask yourself first. The first one is "What will it be used for?" Are your goals oriented towards adding more cardio or do you want something you can sit on at your desk and do exercises?

We lean more towards the BOSU for a fun, safe, versatile home workout. Since there also are things you can do with a stability ball, we would also add the BOSU Stability Ball.

BosuBall

Clients often ask "How do I choose between a BOSU  or stability ball for my home gym?"  BOSUs and stability balls, are tools with advantages and disadvantages. It is important to think about these when deciding between buying one or the other.

Bosuhalf Ball

The “K” folder contains disk images smaller than 1 megabyte, in powers of 2 starting at 128K (the smallest that works), and also multiples 1.25, 1.50, and 1.75 of those powers.

Halfbalanceballexercises for beginners

“blanks-1.1.zip” is a zip archive containing a folder of zipped empty Macintosh disk image files of various sizes and formats.

Practicing Kinesiologist | Certified Fascia Stretch Therapist | Clinical Pilates Instructor. Alfred has been a Kinesiologist since 1999. He started Lifemoves in 2007 to provide exercise therapy and fitness programs for people with injuries, chronic diseases and disabilities. His focus as a Kinesiologist is to empower and to guide people to learn to move with more strength, confidence and ease. He is an avid Lego and Star Wars fan. His other hobbires include writing, playing board games and being active outdoors.

Although it is commonly known as the BOSU ball, it is not a ball.  It is an inflatable half-dome made of similar materials to a physioball.

This creates a 7 Megabyte file, named 'my_image.dsk', in the current directory. 'count' is the number of 512 byte blocks.

BOSUballexercises

Half ballexercises

For Microsoft Windows, it is reported that the command line utility MAKEDSK will make zero-filled files. The same archive also contains MAKEIMG which generates formatted disk images. However, according to Disk First Aid and Norton Utilities, the disk images it generates are not quite in standard HFS format, so it may be safer just to use MAKEDSK, and let Mac OS in the emulated computer do the formatting.

The top level of the blanks folder contains 2 other disk images in the sizes of standard Macintosh floppy disks: 400K and 1440K. A real Macintosh Plus floppy drive could use 400K disks, but not 1440K, which came later. But Mini vMac doesn't emulate the real floppy drive, replacing the disk driver in ROM, and so can use any size disk image, not just 400K and 800K.

BOSUBallprice

BalanceBall

You can also create your own blank disk images of any size. If you try to mount a file in Mini vMac which isn't a disk image (preferably all zeroes) the operating system of the emulated machine will ask if you want to initialize it. Choosing 'Initialize' will make a perfectly good disk image. You can create zeroed files in the terminal of Mac OS X, or Linux, with commands such as:

The “M” folder contains disk images larger or equal to 1 megabyte, up to 224M. In general, it may not a good idea to use the largest sizes, for reasons described below.

The BOSU Trainer was first developed in 1999 by David Weck. It became all the rage in group fitness classes and with Personal Trainers during the 2000s.

If you're thinking of using large disk images, keep in mind that it is not a good idea to create one giant disk image for all your work. One reason is that the HFS file system is limited to a maximum of 65535 allocation blocks. So the minimum block size increases for larger disks, meaning more wasted space. (HFS Plus fixed this problem, but isn't supported on a Macintosh Plus.) Another reason it is a bad idea is that a Macintosh Plus doesn't have the memory protection of modern computers, so that a bug in any program can potentially corrupt mounted disks. It is safer to have separate disk images for separate purposes. This way Mini vMac gives the same benefits of memory protection, and more. No matter what program you run in the emulated machine, nothing can be harmed except the disk images that are mounted at the time. (Unless there was a major bug in Mini vMac, of course.)

Copyright 2010-2023 by Life Moves Health and Fitness Inc. Lifemoves is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.   -  Designed by Thrive Themes | Powered by WordPress

Another issue is that when you make multiple copies of these blank disk images, they will have the same creation date. This can make a difference if you use “Aliases” in System 7. The Macintosh system software can mistakenly decide that an already mounted disk is the disk it is looking for, particularly if it has the same creation date as the correct disk. If you might encounter this problem, before using one of the blank disk images you can erase it (with the “Erase Disk...” command in the Special menu of the Finder) to make sure it has a unique creation date.

Lifemoves Health and Rehabilitation acknowledges we are fortunate to provide our health and wellness services on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people.

Half BallBalance

First unzip “blanks-1.1.zip” to get the folder “blanks”. Then when you need a blank disk image, unzip one of the files in this folder. For example, unzip “800K.zip” to get “800K.dsk”, an 800K blank disk image, the size of a floppy disk normally used by a real Macintosh Plus.

Affiliate disclosure.  All links to BOSU's official website are for informational purposes. We do not earn any fees from these links.  *Lifemoves receives a small commission from purchases made through Amazon links on our website. These help support our efforts to provide you with high-quality educational content.

The “dc42” folder contains disk images with the Disk Copy 4.2 header, and having file tags and checksums. (All the other disk images in Blanks are “raw”, containing just image data with no header or trailer.) Mini vMac can support file tags with the build system option “-sony-tag 1”, and can support checksums with the build system option “-sony-sum 1”.

If you create a zeroed disk image file on a Macintosh, and wish to set the file type and creator with SetFType, you should first mount the zeroed file in Mini vMac to initialize it, unmount it, and then use SetFType. If you use SetFType before initializing the file, it won't know that the file is supposed to be a disk image.

If you're using Mini vMac on a Macintosh, you might want to set the file type and creator of your new disk image file, using “SetFType”.

For information about using disk images in Mini vMac, see the 'Floppy Drive' section of the Hardware Reference. To transfer files from your real computer into and out of disk image files, see the utilities ImportFl and ExportFl.