I took a few moments to launch Mini vMac and play with Mac OS 6.08 on my MacBook Pro that runs Snow Leopard. Since Snow Leopard will not let you write to or create HFS disk images I was limited to what was available on the 6.08 Disk Tools disk, namely the venerable Disk First Aid and Apple HD SC Setup.
I was very proud of myself for remembering that there is a secret key combination to expose the logging window of DFA so you can see what it is doing. Back in the early days DFA just worked it’s magic and expected you to wait patiently for the watch cursor to disappear and the application to report it’s cryptic results.
If you press Command-S while DFA is open a window underneath appears that displays the status of the DFA processes. Since this always begins and ends with a date/time stamp and the message “Scavenging begun” or “Scavenging ended” I presume Command-S was chosen to display the Scavenging process.
Disk First Aid 1.4.3 with secret window revealed
Later versions of Disk First Aid by default display the disk examination and repair process, but back in the System 6 days you had to know the magical keycode to watch its inner workings as it churned away performing its diagnostics and repair.
