E-Maculation

Back in the day, I can recall that there used to be a couple of programs floating around for reading Macintosh 1.44 MB floppy disks on PCs. There's hardly any need for such things anymore, of course; HFV Explorer works perfectly well, and there's even Executor in a pinch if you don't want to use Mac OS ROMs for some reason.

Still, I thought it might be amusing to contemplate if there's anything worth preserving in that area. Mac-in-DOS is the first one that comes to mind, and I think I can recall something called MacRead and a DOS program called MacSEE.

A lot of them were hilariously expensive. (I remember E-mailing the MacRead author about his astonishing shareware fee, noting that Executor was only slightly more costly.) Perhaps some of them were eventually officially released as freeware?

Well, there are still some applications out there today for reading mac discs, they are just as expensive as before. I reckon you are talking about HFS readers for PCs, correct? I think some of the current software can do that too even though HFS is disappearing.

I don't think that's a case of lack of better alternatives, but certainly is interesting to preserve any old applications.

I don't know any of these applications you mentioned, but I used MacDrive quite a lot back in a day when I had to use Windows XP at my job. I always keep a copy of it handy.

If memory doesn't fail me, there was a case for replicating HFV Explorer's functionality in an updated piece of software and some interesting debate about reverse-engineering it since the original code seemed to be lost. It would be nice, but I believe the same effect can be accomplished by using HFSUtils. We only need someone with patience and time to do it. I played with that idea, but I've been lazy to try it.

But I digress.. If you have such applications, I would suggest you keep them. There's always someone who at some point needs these things. If the software is good, one day some person will find himself/herself sitting in front of an old PC trying to read a goddamned Mac diskette and searching for that forsaken application in the darkest corners of the Internet (you are right, that is indeed amusing). Maybe that person doesn't need it, just wants to take it for a spin. This forum is proof enough that people enjoy using some old applications because they are worth it. Perhaps these are worth it too?

I never really searched for it, but I believe we could find websites similar to the Macintosh Garden that would welcome softwares like those. Maybe even MG itself would be an appropriate place for it.

In the interests of completion, I thought I might mention MacOpener here, which I stumbled upon the other day despite never having encountered it previously. It seems it went through quite a few iterations.
https://socket3.wordpress.com/2019/09/0 ... pener-2-0/

Please do upload your findings to Macintoshgarden.
We already have some exceptions of hosted WinDOS apps - ClarisWoks 5 for example.
Nobody will mind ancient Mac floppy readers.
Some versions of MacDrive also found their way onto the server meanwhile.

Made a page for MacOpener at Macintoshgarden, Jorpho.
MacOpener 2.0 works fine on my side, Windows 89SE and XP.
Thanks for digging up this oldie!

24bit wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 6:10 pm Made a page for MacOpener at Macintoshgarden, Jorpho.
MacOpener 2.0 works fine on my side, Windows 89SE and XP.
Thanks for digging up this oldie!

Out of curiosity, I just went to macintoshgarden and searched for “MacOpener”. Interestingly, next to your page, PC MacLAN 9 came up. The ISO includes an installer for MacOpener 6.05. I actually uploaded this myself more than three years ago, but didn’t pay any attention to MacOpener.

So in case anyone has use for the newer version, go ahead