Craigwd_2000
Your naming problem is more apparent, through Aladdin (Allume)'s changing terminology, than real. When the World was young, StuffIt stuffed (compressed) and UnStuffIt unstuffed (decoded/decompressed). Nowadays, DropStuff compresses and Expander decodes/decompresses. They are parts of the StuffIt Deluxe suite. StuffIt Expander alone is freely available from Aladdin, its heirs, successors and assigns.
The length of this thread attests the difficulties that you have had. It is time for some Cæsarean action. Scorched earth. Devastation. Population not 'decimated' (one in ten) but exterminated or annihilated (completely). No tern left unstoned, and all that. In your situation I should long since have reformatted the drive. If I couldn't do that, tossed the drive. Having reformatted, then installed a functional, make-do System to serve while I acquired the necessary externals to install the System of my choice. That can also be achieved by removing the drive to another SCSI Mac.
Dallying with old Macs does require repair gear. As Jim (Appaloosa) has often written, nothing beats having, at the ready, an external drive with several bootable partitions and Systems for just these kinds of problems, and repair/decode/disk utility/directory repair software on that drive. And a copy of Ted Landau's
Sad Macs, Bombs and Other Disasters is good reading on the bus.
