tar do not support Mac OS resource forks so don’t use those to archive classic data. You can grab the below mentioned resources from the Wired server. This article will go over the available options for creating such archives for each major OS version. Once the Classic file is compressed, it’s resource fork is preserved, letting you upload to an FTP site or Non-Mac computers safely. The resource fork is used mostly by executables, but every file is able to have a resource fork.įor example, uploading a Classic file or application directly to an FTP site or to a non-Macintosh computer will likely render the data useless.Ī good way to safely transfer Classic files is to first compress them using a resource fork friendly compression utility like DropStuff to create a. For example, a word processing file might store its text in the data fork, while storing any embedded images in the same file’s resource fork.

A resource fork stores information in a specific form, containing details such as icon bitmaps, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and application code (machine code). When we deal with old Mac software or files, eg Classic (pre-OS X) there are resource forks to consider. But first, for those not in the know, why even bother? What makes Classic data so fragile? Below is a list of Mac OS versions and architectures and the best Stuffit for them. So I took what Steve talked about on Mac Yak and ran with it. The topic was “How to transfer files between old and new Macs” and got me thinking, how far back can we go to send files between different Macs and OS versions? What really is the best way to package this data to ensure it survives transfers to Windows PC’s, Linux servers over FTP etc? Recently on Mac Yak episode #11 (which unfortunately got horribly mangled by YouTube so it’s not easy to watch) the topic of Classic data preservation and transfer was brought up.

Classic mac emulator zip