Mac OS 9 Lives

Mac OS 9 Discussion => Development & Programming => Topic started by: The Rook on May 17, 2019, 03:23:00 PM

Title: Mac OS 7/8/9 Application files showing 0 bytes in Windows 10
Post by: The Rook on May 17, 2019, 03:23:00 PM

I had some Mac OS applications that I backed up (applications that I wrote for the Mac) that eventually got copied to a Windows PC and zipped with 7-zip. I recently unzipped the files only to find that the application files were all 0 bytes.  I also noticed that some ResEdit files associated with the applications were also showing 0 bytes.   In addition, I had some sound files that were also now all 0 bytes.

Does anyone know why this happened?

Did the process of copying the files from Mac to Windows corrupt the application, resource, and sound files?

Title: Re: Mac OS 7/8/9 Application files showing 0 bytes in Windows 10
Post by: Daniel on May 17, 2019, 05:05:16 PM

Mac OS is pretty much the only thing that knows how to handle resource forks. When you copy to Windows, the resource fork disappears, as well as some useful metadata.

As Mac 68k apps store all their code in the resource fork of a file, everything disappears. PowerPC applications might keep their code, but they would lose all internal resources (including the resources which tell the system how to use the code).

Data copied from Macs absolutely must be archived and compressed by a tool such as BinHex or Stuffit while the files are still on the Mac. Otherwise, a lot of critical data is not moved with the rest of the file.

Title: Re: Mac OS 7/8/9 Application files showing 0 bytes in Windows 10
Post by: The Rook on May 17, 2019, 06:06:49 PM

Thanks for the confirmation.

I was afraid it was something like that.