stuffit expander for Mac OS 7.5.3

That sounds like those files are munged. If they were valid .smi files, they would have a couple of dozen or so resources present and accessible in ResEdit.

A .smi file must include several specific resources; these act as a small program, allowing the disk image contained in the file to self-mount. In the absence of those resources, the file won't mount.

Mac files which have a resource fork, such as any program as well as .smi files, are usually protected by encapsulating them in a .sit or .hqx archive, or perhaps even .zip.

If the download is made on most any machine running windows, on some machines running OS X (I think), and decompressed from the .sit, .hqx, or .zip format while still on that machine, the resource fork can get stripped off. This can also happen when the decompressed file is transported via a volume (such as a flash or thumb drive) which is formatted using a Windows format.

The solution is to not decompress the file while it is on such a machine. Instead, copy the original file (typically in .sit, .hqx, or .zip format) to the destination Mac machine without making any attempt to decompress the file, nor allowing the resident OS to do it (some OS's may be set to automatically decmpress such files).

There are several points in the transfer process you list where an unprotected .smi file could have had its resource fork stripped off:

- when copied to the USB flash drive, if that drive is not formatted as a Mac volume (it probably is not).

- when copied to the Vista PC. This action would almost certainly have stripped the resource fork. Windows just does not understand resource forks, and arbitraily disposes of it. Sometimes the resource fork might be retained, but as a separate file not as part of the .smi.

- when copied to the CF card, again since that card is probably not formatted as a Mac volume.

Suggest you go back to the OS X machine and see if you can find the original, still in the protected archive (.sit, .hqx, or .zip format). If you can find it still in that archive, copy that archive across.

Strong suggestion - use the USB flash drive to do the transfer, after formatting it as a Mac volume.

Late edit -

Strong suggestion - use the USB flash drive to do the transfer, after formatting it as a Mac volume.

I forgot the PM7500 does not have USB. So, you'd probably need to do all those steps. Just make sure the file being transported is still in the protected archive.

If the PM7500 has email capability, you could try emailing the archived file directly from the OS X machine to the PM7500.

An smi transferred without protection (such as MacBinary or BinHex encoding, or StuffIt compression) would probably appear on your PowerBook 1400 with a generic document icon, not a special program icon (even after rebuilding the Desktop). The correct way, as Don already said, is to transfer the downloaded file in a protected form. Typically, a download from the Apple site is encoded MacBinary (.bin). You should be able to omit the first stages, and download directly to the PC. Keep the .bin file as it is until on the PB 1400, and use StuffIt Expander there to carry out the decoding.

Jan