Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Hi, I have a green imac powerpc at home and need to open some old files backed up on an external hard disk.
The external hard disk is fat32 and was formatted by a pc.
unfortunately the files I need appear as PC files with a blue PC icon, but I'm sure they are Ready, Set & Go files created
on mac os 9.2. Any help is appreciated.
iMac, Mac OS 9.2.x
The external hard disk is fat32 and was formatted by a pc
Bad news. You do not have you data backup in a reliable format. Clasic files may contain a data and resource fork. Fat32 supports only the data fork.
Have you tried opening the file from inside the application?
The only other idea. Is to create a valid file. Try pasting the data fork somehow from the file you want to recover.
There maybe an easy way of doing this on Mac OS X Tiger or newer. Do you have access to such a system?
Robert
The external hard disk is fat32 and was formatted by a pc
Bad news. You do not have you data backup in a reliable format. Clasic files may contain a data and resource fork. Fat32 supports only the data fork.
Have you tried opening the file from inside the application?
The only other idea. Is to create a valid file. Try pasting the data fork somehow from the file you want to recover.
There maybe an easy way of doing this on Mac OS X Tiger or newer. Do you have access to such a system?
Robert
@rccharles : thanks a lot for your quick response.
yes, I have tried opening the files from inside the application but no use, they didn't open.
I shall try to find a friend with Tiger this weekend, hope it helps.
in the meantime I have another issue if you don't mind answering :
I had backed up some of the files directly to a usb stick also, and these can be opened as the usb was formatted in the same machine. the program the files were created in is Ready, Set, Go by Diwan software from UK. I can see the pages and have full access. Unfortunately when printing them into PDF or Postscript files original fonts can't be used and some characters are replaced by nonsense symbols, the original files are written in Turkish, somehow Print To Pdf or Laserwriter 8 makes these changes.
Cheers.
There is a classic discussion.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/classic_mac_os?view=discussions
I shall try to find a friend with Tiger this weekend, hope it helps.
Fyi: The Mac OS X system needs to be Tiger or newer.
You may try this. I tried it long ago, but kind of forget the details.
Be sure to format the usb stick on a Mac with a Mac OS file system HFS+.
Create several files with Ready, Set & Go files created. Some empty. Some with data. etc.
Copy these to the usb stick with a Mac Format.
Copy to a Tiger or newer system.
Create a dos formated usb stick.
Copy good files to the dos usb stick. This splits the files into a data and resource fork. This is a Tiger innovation.
Now you need to replace the data fork with the other data fork. The data fork has the normal name. The resource fork starts with ._
You will have to see hidden files.
turn off hidden.
Copy the files back to to a usb HFS+ formated flash drive. This puts the files back together.
I suggest you bring along a coy of Ready, Set & Go. If your friend has classic installed, You can test there. Or, bring you computer along. You may need to do this more than once.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
# Show hidden files & folders in finder
# Just copy the the line starting with defaults into the terminal. Press return to run.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE ;killall Finder
# Normal display. Hide hidden files & folders in finder
# Just copy the the line starting with defaults into the terminal
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE ;killall Finder
The finder comes right back.
See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4070684?start=15&tstart=0
--------------------------------------------------------------
Mac OS files may contain two parts: Data & Resource. On HFS+ disks you see only one file. On Dos disks, you see two files. One file is visible. One is hidden. Turns out I have classic installed on my system. The finder application contains data & resource forks.
# My Dos flash drive is DOS formatted
# Previously, I copied the Classic finder to the Dos flash drive.
mac $ pwd
/Volumes/dos/seeparts
mac $ ls -lah
total 4848
drwxrwxrwx 1 mac staff 8K Mar 15 13:51 ./
drwxrwxrwx 1 mac staff 16K Mar 15 13:50 ../
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mac staff 6K Mar 15 13:51 .DS_Store*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mac staff 512K Mar 15 13:50 ._Finder*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 mac staff 1M May 29 2001 Finder*
# Here is the file on my startup disk.
mac $ ls -lah /System\ Folder-current/Finder
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root admin 1M May 29 2001 /System Folder-current/Finder*
# If you know this clever method, you can see the resource fork.
# Notice the ending /rsrc!
mac $ ls -lah /System\ Folder-current/Finder/rsrc
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root admin 512K May 29 2001 /System Folder-current/Finder/rsrc*
mac $
fyi resource background.
http://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork
http://jonsview.com/mac-os-x-resource-forks
http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/macosx.html
You may need to edit the resource fork. ( cute icon )
backup file appears with a PC icon and won't open in mac os 9.2
