Help with SoftMac

[Po Lu]

Well, I recently *installed* softmac and when I boot from Net Access and click on *.smi pr *.sea, it says:
The document "xxx.sea (or xxx.smi)" can not be opened because the application that created it could not be found! What should I do?
Help me please!
-Po Lu

[24bit]

I used SoftMac only for a short while some years ago, but its seems obvious, that a boot floppy image will only have very limited capabilities.
Best set up a full featured OS of your choice with enough RAM and "HDD" space to process the files you named.
You may also try this bootable image: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-753-emulators

BTW: I stopped using SoftMac, as there is no sound and MiniVmac, BasiliskII, FusionPC and Sheepshaver do the better job IMHO.

[Po Lu]

I used SoftMac only for a short while some years ago, but its seems obvious, that a boot floppy image will only have very limited capabilities.
Best set up a full featured OS of your choice with enough RAM and "HDD" space to process the files you named.
You may also try this bootable image: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-753-emulators

BTW: I stopped using SoftMac, as there is no sound and MiniVmac, BasiliskII, FusionPC and Sheepshaver do the better job IMHO.

Apparently, NO. That disk does NOT work. Still gives that no app found error.

[adespoton]

First thing: do you have Stuffit Expander?

Second: did you accidentally strip the resource fork from the files? .sea should have a file type of APPL and be a fully executable application, able to launch itself and extract an embedded archive file.

It's possible you just have the type and creator stripped, in which case you need to re-add them. I believe the type should be APPL for .sea and SIT! for .sit. Mac OS doesn't do anything with file extensions, and requires the file type to be set for the Finder to know what to do. If you've got Stuffit Expander, you might be able to just run that, open the files, and manually extract the contents -- just not from the Finder.

[Po Lu]

Stuffit expander installer will NOT run as it is ALSO an SMI! (I don't know who made this Stuffit "INSTALLER" program. It may NOT be genuine.)
(Tried to rename it to: Stuffit.SEA Stuffit Stuffit.app)
Any help on this?
And, HOW to add the "fork"?
-Po Lu

[adespoton]

As I said, .smi isn't a filetype; it's a self-extracting application. If you've got a stuffit installer.smi, that means that the resource fork has likely been stripped -- likely from downloading the file to a Windows filesystem, which doesn't recognize resource forks and has only saved the data fork. [edit] On classic Mac OS, a file's name is just that -- it's name. You can't change the file type or creator by changing the name. .smi and .sea are just visual indicators as to what type of file you're looking at if you aren't using the Finder. SMI stands for self-mounting image, and is a self-executing disk image file. The Stuffit installer would be contained inside the image once it mounts. SEA is a self-extracting archive, and contains an application (mostly in the resource fork) that is able to expand the stuffit archive stored in the data fork. If you download these to Windows, you'll just get the data fork, which is the stuffit archive or disk image without the application part that will extract t hem.

You need to get one of the pre-formatted images that has Stuffit already installed on it so that you can load an already-working disk image to decompress the files you're loading in.

When in Windows, all the Mac-specific files you've got should have a .bin or .hqx file extension; these are two "flattened" file types that take the two Mac forks and squish them into a single data file that Windows filesystems can see.

You can think about the Resource fork as being like a Windows alternate data stream; it uses the same file node as a reference, but stores different data, structured in a different way. The closest equivalent on Windows is the Resource section of a Windows executable; although Windows stores them in the same file stream and depends on the PE file header to define how to load data from it.

There's a few links on emaculation to usable disk images that contain usable Stuffit applications.

[Jorpho]

Most recenty when this came up, the copy of Stuffit from http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/archive/stuffexp/index.html was suggested. Download stuffit_expander_40.zip , unzip it in Windows, and mount the .dsk file in your emulator alongside the .hfv file that you use for your hard drive image.

As discussed on that page, if you drag your .sea file onto the Stuffit Expander application icon, Stuffit Expander should be able to open it automatically. (The page suggests this should work even if the .sea file was copied over from Windows and has the incorrect file type.)

Also, I agree with the above suggestion that Basilisk II or Mini vMac is probably a much better choice than SoftMac.

[Po Lu]

Most recenty when this came up, the copy of Stuffit from http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/archive/stuffexp/index.html was suggested. Download stuffit_expander_40.zip , unzip it in Windows, and mount the .dsk file in your emulator alongside the .hfv file that you use for your hard drive image.

As discussed on that page, if you drag your .sea file onto the Stuffit Expander application icon, Stuffit Expander should be able to open it automatically. (The page suggests this should work even if the .sea file was copied over from Windows and has the incorrect file type.)

Also, I agree with the above suggestion that Basilisk II or Mini vMac is probably a much better choice than SoftMac.

Why do i use softmac? Here:
1. BasillikII is not compatable with sheep.
2. Mini vMac only supports B&W! Who wants Mono-Chrome?

[Jorpho]

1. BasillikII is not compatable with sheep.

What do you mean? Are you trying to run them at the same time..?

I would still be inclined to try FusionPC before SoftMac, but you would have to set up FusionPC in DOSBox.

[adespoton]

Most recenty when this came up, the copy of Stuffit from http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/archive/stuffexp/index.html was suggested. Download stuffit_expander_40.zip , unzip it in Windows, and mount the .dsk file in your emulator alongside the .hfv file that you use for your hard drive image.

As discussed on that page, if you drag your .sea file onto the Stuffit Expander application icon, Stuffit Expander should be able to open it automatically. (The page suggests this should work even if the .sea file was copied over from Windows and has the incorrect file type.)

Also, I agree with the above suggestion that Basilisk II or Mini vMac is probably a much better choice than SoftMac.

Why do i use softmac? Here:
1. BasillikII is not compatable with sheep.
2. Mini vMac only supports B&W! Who wants Mono-Chrome?

1. Hmm? Is this a Windows-only thing? I remember using both on Windows 2000 back in 2003 at the same time with no difficulties. I currently spin up (at the same time) multiple BII and SheepShaver instances on OS X. With ASLR on modern Windows, there should be minimal chance of memory overlap, and I can't think of any other reason they'd be incompatible, even when running at the same time.

2. Mini vMac supports the Mac II with color. I've got 4 of these that I run at the same time. Enabling audio can cause glitches, but it's possible for many use cases too. Mini vMac also supports whatever screen resolution and depth you want if running in Mac II mode; you just have to select the right custom build or build it yourself with the right flags set. This is true for ALL target platforms.

That said, I used to run Basilisk II in WINE sandboxes before I figured out how to customize its NVRAM location.

http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOnWindows indicates that WINE won't run on Windows yet, but using the cross-compilation libraries within MinGW does, so you could compile BII on that and it would get its own memory space (same for Sheep).

Alternatively, you could run Mint or Arch Linux on your computer (either in a VM or on bare metal) and run your emulators in that

[Po Lu]

Most recenty when this came up, the copy of Stuffit from http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/archive/stuffexp/index.html was suggested. Download stuffit_expander_40.zip , unzip it in Windows, and mount the .dsk file in your emulator alongside the .hfv file that you use for your hard drive image.

As discussed on that page, if you drag your .sea file onto the Stuffit Expander application icon, Stuffit Expander should be able to open it automatically. (The page suggests this should work even if the .sea file was copied over from Windows and has the incorrect file type.)

Also, I agree with the above suggestion that Basilisk II or Mini vMac is probably a much better choice than SoftMac.

Why do i use softmac? Here:
1. BasillikII is not compatable with sheep.
2. Mini vMac only supports B&W! Who wants Mono-Chrome?

1. Hmm? Is this a Windows-only thing? I remember using both on Windows 2000 back in 2003 at the same time with no difficulties. I currently spin up (at the same time) multiple BII and SheepShaver instances on OS X. With ASLR on modern Windows, there should be minimal chance of memory overlap, and I can't think of any other reason they'd be incompatible, even when running at the same time.

2. Mini vMac supports the Mac II with color. I've got 4 of these that I run at the same time. Enabling audio can cause glitches, but it's possible for many use cases too. Mini vMac also supports whatever screen resolution and depth you want if running in Mac II mode; you just have to select the right custom build or build it yourself with the right flags set. This is true for ALL target platforms.

That said, I used to run Basilisk II in WINE sandboxes before I figured out how to customize its NVRAM location.

http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOnWindows indicates that WINE won't run on Windows yet, but using the cross-compilation libraries within MinGW does, so you could compile BII on that and it would get its own memory space (same for Sheep).

Alternatively, you could run Mint or Arch Linux on your computer (either in a VM or on bare metal) and run your emulators in that

How do I use Mac II Mode?
On Windows7 BII+SHEEP:
Sheepshaver.exe has stoped functioning.
Windows is searching for a sloution.
[------------------------------------------]
On Windows 2000 Advanced Server With SP? in VMWare Player:
&nspb;&nspb;[Windows]
A fatal ? has ? at ?
The curent application will be terminated.
Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to restart
Press any key to cotinue
& Press any key to cotinue_
And for linux, I don't like it.
I don't want to be a crazed linux fan who causes mayhem on the streets of chicago by eating evreyones left shoe.

[adespoton]

http://www.gryphel.com/c/var/index.html -- choose a Mac II variation.

<edit> for example, this one: http://www.gryphel.com/d/var/latest/c/m ... 86.bin.zip