SheepShaver and the Case of the Time Traveling Disks

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

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Temporary Joe
Student Driver
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2013 10:02 pm

SheepShaver and the Case of the Time Traveling Disks

Post by Temporary Joe »

So I've been running SheepShaver for years at this point (I believe 2011, and later transferred my disks to Windows) and at some point, I believe I transferred over my disks to my new computer, or something weird like that. Anyway, at some point, the "Date Modified" got "stuck" on my main disks to 2017. This didn't seem to be an issue as I could run them off of the same folder, make updates, etc.

The trouble started when I loaded up the 22-09-2020 build, which I believed was the same mentioned in this thread. I used the new GUI app to point the emulator to the disks in the 2013 SheepShaver folder (the "recommended" build). The first sign that something was wrong was that it immediately shrank the resolution upon starting, and then starting up Barrack, part of an experiment three years ago when I put it in the Startup Items as I tried to make a self-loading package with Barrack. When I quit, I couldn't take it out of the Startup Items folder, as the disk was locked.

Only when I copied the disks to the new SheepShaver folder did the "locked disk" problem was fixed, and I was finally able to play Apeiron in the first time in many years with a fix the new build offered (and took Barrack out of the Startup Items folder). But the problem is now that the disks are still stuck in the past, so I can't just leave the SS2013 folder behind without copying over three years of additions and other items.

In any case, I'm sure that I can prevent data loss by creating a fifth volume (due to the limits of the classic Mac's HD capacity, I have four virtual disks, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta) and just copying stuff straight over.

That's a workaround that is possible but what I want is two things: the easy transfer of the volumes (with their 2020 changes) to the new folder and insight as to why this is happening: whatever happened meant that the main disks (Delta was created later, and I believe is immune to the problems) essentially have two versions of themselves in the single disk, an up-to-date 2020 version that the 2013 build plays well with and a trapped-in-the-past 2017 version that lay dormant until a new version was introduced.

I wondered if there was some sort of 2017 disk "copy" inside the 2020 versions that was taking up space, but a cursory look comparing the sizes of the two versions did not suggest that (differences of up to 20MB were found, but I imagine that was a result of mild changes between the two, and not hundreds of megabytes of duplicate files).

Has anyone encountered a similar problem, and is it easily fixable?


This topic was previously posted on Macintosh Garden
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