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Macintoshgarden / Linux / Stuffit file woes

equant

Well-known member
I have been trying to get software from macintoshgarden and macrepository to run on basiliskII and a powerbook.  Here's a diagram showing the paths that the files take...

macintoshgarden.com -> linux box -> BasiliskII
|
-> Ymodem transfer -> Powerbook running System 7.1




Anything I DL that is .sea.bin works fine on the powerbook and in BasiliskII.  However, I have troubles with *.sit files (which is the majority of the files on these sites).  I have several version of stuffit on both BasiliskII and the powerbook that don't uncompress the the downloaded *.sit files.  I _have_ found that Stuffit Expander 5.5 on BasiliskII seems to handle things that don't otherwise work.  However, Stuffit Expander 5.5 won't run on system 7.1.

I guess my question is this...  Is the problem that the *.sit files are corrupted when I DL them to my linux box (and Stuffit Expander 5.5 knows how to deal with this corruption) or is it that the files on these sites are really compressed in a way that is not easily compatible with System 7.1 and earlier versions of Stuffit Expander?

As a note, there have been some *.sit.hqx and *.sit.bin files that haven't worked for me... so while stuffit 3.something on my powerbook recognizes and decodes the .hqx files, it doesn't handle the resulting .sit file.  It seems odd to me that all of the stuffit version are compress with *.sit and are not *.sea.bin....  How are people supposed to get started if they don't have stuffit?

Thanks!

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Since the files on places like Macintosh Garden are user contributed, it's likely whoever stuffed it used a newer version of Stuffit that's not compatible with the older versions.  Yes, it's frustrating.

It'd be nice everyone used at most Stuffit 4, but even better would have been to zip stuff.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
A few questions: what PowerBook do you have? Do you have a floppy drive?

It looks like Stuffit 5.x runs under 7.1, that's the most up-to-date one that can. An alternate route you can go is making floppy images, then making those images into disks for the PowerBook. Another (large investment) route is to get an internet-capable Mac that is old enough to be able to use floppies (G4 with external USB disk drive, for instance(.

 

equant

Well-known member
A few questions: what PowerBook do you have? Do you have a floppy drive?

It looks like Stuffit 5.x runs under 7.1, that's the most up-to-date one that can. An alternate route you can go is making floppy images, then making those images into disks for the PowerBook. Another (large investment) route is to get an internet-capable Mac that is old enough to be able to use floppies (G4 with external USB disk drive, for instance(.
Stuffit 5.x runs under 7.1.1 but not 7.1 _and_ requires 8MB of physical ram.

It's a PB 165, but I was hopping to use serial since that's what I can do with little effort.  In addition, I had this idea that I could write a piece of software that sat on a local linux box and simulated a BBS interface for browsing and DLing apps from macintoshgarden and macrepository.  This is why I'm trying to understand where the issue is... is it with my stuffit version, or is it with .sit files being corrupted.  If all of the files on MG are stuffed with a version of stuffit that is incompatible with early macs, then it doesn't make sense to transfer files from MG straight to an old mac.  Sounds like it's an issue with Stuffit versions, and I'll do some repacking of archives tonight to test if that's the case.

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
By chance, do you have a localtalk to ethertalk bridge? If so, an option netatalk2 on the linux box, or perhaps following along with cheesestraws' effors to build a userland localtalk implementation, which should make the mechanical process of transferring files more easy, and let you avoid having to deal with basilisk II.

A related option would be to use a newer mac that also has ethernet (even a quadra will do) and download files from macgarden onto that one and use localtalk or diskettes or another removable storage media to transfer them. This will be slower, but perhaps let you 

Incidentally, solving the "how things are stored on web sites target more at modern computers than vintage ones" is one of the goals of vtools. However, that's admittedly more relevant if you've got TCP/IP on the PowerBook, as vtools can be connected to via appleshare-over-IP (req. 7.5.x+opentransport and appleshare updates through 10.6.x) or FTP - so I realize that that doesn't solve the immediate problem, at least right away.

I have a copy of the internet archive's copy of macgarden from a couple years ago and largely things on there are packed poorly and inconsistently and sorting through it and formatting it more suitably for access by old macs is something I want to do, but haven't been able to dedicate a lot of time to very recently.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I agree With what Cory says, as a community we need to do better with file

storage. Everything that I compressed and sent to Vtools was done with StuffIt classic for compatibility. All disk images were Disk Copy 4.2. There are obvious exceptions (CD/DVD images, stuff that only runs on OS 8 and up, etc). We should post some sort of FAQ regarding storage so that this is done I some sort of methodical way. I have wanted to make some sort of “get started pack” for people to be able to download and just get started, different ones for different age machines.

 

Crutch

Well-known member
The fact that back in the day StuffIt changed file formats multiple times without changing the file type or extension (I mean, that sort of thing is literally what file types were for on classic Mac OS....), and also didn’t foresee this with a “magic number” or other versioning info that would have let older StuffIt versions politely inform users which later version is needed to open unreadable archives, really didn’t set us up well for this today...

 

equant

Well-known member
The fact that back in the day StuffIt changed file formats multiple times ... and also didn’t foresee this with a “magic number” or other versioning info ...


So is there little hope of being able to identify the version required by looking at the file?  Last night I just started looking at the headers of a few files that I know use different stuffit versions (but they looked the same at first glance to me using 'strings').  I was hoping to be able to write a script that would sort compressed files by stuffit version.

 

equant

Well-known member
Everything that I compressed and sent to Vtools was done with StuffIt classic for compatibility. All disk images were Disk Copy 4.2. There are obvious exceptions (CD/DVD images, stuff that only runs on OS 8 and up, etc). We should post some sort of FAQ regarding storage so that this is done I some sort of methodical way. I have wanted to make some sort of “get started pack” for people to be able to download and just get started, different ones for different age machines.


I agree completely.  I had completely forgotten that these incompatibilities between stuffit existsed.  This has to be a major headache for any newcomer who wants to play around with minivmac or BasiliskII much less the real hardware.  I was thinking exactly the same thing over the weekend that there needs to be an easily found starter pack that is delivered in several formats (disk image, sea.bin).   Maybe one or two disks per system/architecture.

I've only returned to the mac hobby recently, but this is the first I've heard about Vtools.  It looks like a nice project, I'll have to check it out further.

I have been seriously entertaining the idea of making a python BBS that one can easily DL (github) and run on a hobbiest's local host machine that would be able to relay apps (it would know the location on archives of these 'starter pack', but also act as a search/proxy for all of the files on the archive) that can be easily transferred (X/Y/Z-MODEM) to a classic mac.  I like this idea for a few reasons.  One, it would be possible for me to make.  Two, vintage macs are more likely to have comm software on them than TCP/IP software (especially old powerbooks have comm software on them because of their modems), Three, it's a period correct style of getting software and appeals to me as a fun retro experience. Three and a half, I think it's easier (but slower) than floppy swapping between host and classic mac for a newcomer.  Four, I think it's easier for a newcomer to do than figure out TCP/IP and Opentransport on a mac.  Obvious conns are: You have to have comm software, it's not as good as the localtalk method described earlier in this thread (of which I don't know anything yet), and it's slow.

 

dcr

Well-known member
In addition to StuffIt, there were also various versions of UnStuffIt.  I wonder if any of those would have lower system and RAM requirements to be able to open .sit files stuffed with versions of StuffIt the older Macs cannot run?

 

Dog Cow

Well-known member
So is there little hope of being able to identify the version required by looking at the file?  Last night I just started looking at the headers of a few files that I know use different stuffit versions
There are some magic numbers and constant strings in StuffIt archives that serves to identify the version that created the archive.

The problem is that the older versions of StuffIt Expander don't always know about these magic numbers that came later on.

 

Dog Cow

Well-known member
In addition to StuffIt, there were also various versions of UnStuffIt.  I wonder if any of those would have lower system and RAM requirements to be able to open .sit files stuffed with versions of StuffIt the older Macs cannot run?




There's also an unsit in C which compiles and runs on Unix/Linux systems.

 
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equant

Well-known member
There's also an unsit in C which compiles and runs on Unix/Linux systems.
Thanks for that link I hadn't seen it.  I've also found Maconv, macutils, hfsutils and a few other unix things that look useful, but haven't had a ton of luck getting anything to compile.  At some point I'd like to spend more time exploring these tools in case it's useful to batch convert some things, but I'm guessing applescript in BasiliskII might be an easier path to take.

 
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