[Kickaha]

Okay, so I'm going through my files and such, cleaning my study like a fiend, and I run across a big (BIG) folder of printouts. Many of them are cheat sheets for Classic (MacOS 9) games. I'm fairly sure than I have most of these, but when I go to get the files, they're almost exclusively in WriteNow format. Which got me thinking... I have a lot of extremely old files in this format.

And of course I'm now running 10.5 on Intel.

I'd rather not shell out for MacLinkPlus *just* to do this, y'know?

Options? Go through all the pain and suffering of SheepSaver, extract a ROM, find my MacOS 9 CDs... bleah?

[Banana]

What do you see if you open a document in TextEdit? Perhaps the encoding is simple enough that it can be stripped out with a use of regular expression and string manipulation in a script?

[Kickaha]

I see most of the raw text, but any formatting is gone, which isn't a huge problem. What is, is that the images are. A lot of these cheat sheets are icon based. :}

[scratt]

Hmm.. I smell an opportunity for a little shareware program...

[Kickaha]

Ok, so I went poking around my old drives, and found an older version of MacLinkPlus for MacOS 9. I also found a copy of SheepSaver that I actually set up, so the painful part is done.

Mostly.

See, none of my zipped up applications, on unzipping, will run inside SheepSaver. They show up as documents. Which is annoying, since they show up in MacOS X as Classic Applications! Grr.

Any ideas? The resources are still intact, since the version info, etc, is all there, but it's like the application bit got flipped off.

This really sucks - I specifically used zip under 10.3, since it finally supported resource forks and finder bits... wtf?

[Brad]

Yeah, you can't transfer Mac OS X-generated zips across to SheepShaver. The old version of Stuffit Expander for Classic (you got that, right?) doesn't properly handle the way forks are stored in the zips.

You may want to grab a copy of DropStuff and use that to create actual Stuffit archives on Mac OS X to then transfer to and expand in our SheepShaver environment.

I have a copy of SheepShaver and OS 9 that I play with occasionally here. I'll run a couple of tests with file transfers to see if I can sort out something easy/reliable.

[Brad]

Oh! Another trick I forgot that I think works: create a disk image in Classic Mac OS, copy it to the shared "Unix" drive, open the image in Mac OS X, drop in the files, unmount from OS X, open in Classic.

[Brad]

Here's a 40 MB old-style disk image I just created that should work for you. Figured I'd save you a few steps.

Unzip it in Mac OS X, mount the Transfer.img it normally, copy onto it your files, unmount, and drop Transfer.img into the shared directory for SheepShaver.

http://applenova.com/etc/brad/Transfer.img.zip

[Kickaha]

*blink* Ok, let me read that again...

Here's what I *did*.

1) Zip up the Classic folders.
2) Move zip to /Users/Shared.
3) Unzip.
4) Launch SheepSaver.

They show up as documents.

If I poke at them with xattr, I see the proper APPL type, so I'm kind of stumped.

[Brad]

SheepShaver has trouble with forks and filesystem attributes when transferring across the shared directory mount. That's why you need a "flattening" intermediary step like putting into a disk image.

[noleli2]

I actually have a similar issue with everything I wrote from 6th–9th grade: it's all in MS Works format, which not even Office for Windows can read. Any suggestions?

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Brad SheepShaver has trouble with forks and filesystem attributes when transferring across the shared directory mount. That's why you need a "flattening" intermediary step like putting into a disk image.

Got it. So the files *are* fine, it's SheepSaver that's screwed up. Well, it's good to know I didn't munge them.

Thanks Brad, it works perfectly.

Now to see if I can coerce these WriteNow files to something else...

[Brad]

Originally Posted by noleli2 I actually have a similar issue with everything I wrote from 6th–9th grade: it's all in MS Works format, which not even Office for Windows can read. Any suggestions?

Try OpenOffice or NeoOffice?

In the multitude of open/import options, Microsoft Works is listed. No clue how good the support actually is.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Got it. So the files *are* fine, it's SheepSaver that's screwed up. Well, it's good to know I didn't munge them. Thanks Brad, it works perfectly. Now to see if I can coerce these WriteNow files to something else...

Win!

Do let us know if you mange to make any progress. A quick spin around Google seems to indicate that you're not the only old WriteNow user who has been stuck in this sort of predicament. If you happen to actually find an old copy of WriteNow, it seems that you can export to RTF from within it.

[Kickaha]

I've got WriteNow already. What I'm concerned about is how many bloody files I have to convert - thinking there has to be a slightly better way. (Maybe that shareware app you were talking about scratt... who wants to write a Classic app to batch convert using MacLinkPlus converters? I have the plugins for other apps such as AppleWorks to use, but apparently not the app itself. :P)

I'm a byterat - I can't throw away data. I have *everything*, back to my IIcx days. (The only thing I've tossed are my ADC CDs... but not the quarterly synopsis DVDs... ) You should have seen my wife's eyes light up when she heard the music to Jewelbox for the first time in years.

[Banana]

Wouldn't be it just easier to maintain those in various VMs? Whenever you actually need it, fire up the appropriate VM and you got what you need? Maybe at least to cluster as many things as to keep the counts of VM to minimum but I'm sure with only three or four images for VM, you'll be able to open and read any files you need for the given moment and convert on the spot? (lazy evaluation, anyone? )

[Kickaha]

The problem has been the lack of a proper VM environment set up on my machine *at all*.

Now that I have a workable solution, I can set up VMs as needed. Thanks again, Brad - the .img trick was the bit I was missing. I was freaked out that I had mangled all my Classic apps into trash.

I think I may just throw my Classic apps all into a nice big juicy .img/.dmg and hope like hell that one image doesn't get corrupted.

[Banana]

Personally, I'd think it more workable to maintain VM on a standalone .dmg and save data in their own .dmg, so you get some degree of comparmentization and organization, and backup copies become easier.

But it sounds like you have a solution.

[Kickaha]

Well, I've always (and I mean back to System 7) had a partitioning between Documents and Application folders... so all of my docs are already outside the VM environment. I think what I'm going to do is make a Classic execution environment with the apps, then pull in docs as needed to convert, and export back to the OS X side. That way any docs outside the VM are 'to do', and anything inside is 'done'

Oh hey, one oddity I noticed - is it *normal* for SheepSaver to be using 100% of a core even when idle??

...and then Finder shoots up ~30% during disk access through the .img... the MacBook gets a mite toasty.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Oh hey, one oddity I noticed - is it *normal* for SheepSaver to be using 100% of a core even when idle??

That seems a little high. It probably depends on it you have any apps running in it or have any INITs or CDEVs going haywire.

I'm seeing mine idle around 45% out of 200% on a 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro.



FWIW, I'm running the unofficial July 2008 build, not the last "official" build from Gwenole Beauchesne.

[Kickaha]

Nope, no apps running it, *just* the plain stock OS 9.0.4 booted. I'll have to double check which version it is when I get home.