Unstuffing large amount of files with drag-and-drop crashes

RichardG · Post by **RichardG** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 2:16 pm

Expander 5.5, Mac OS 8.1, 17-09-2008 build with Old World ROM (30-03-2009 crashes or bombs unimplemented trap on "Welcome to Mac OS")

After unstuffing around the 30th file:

and then

I need to delete up to where unstuffing stopped and restart the operation. Also, sometimes SheepShaver crashes when restarting it after the crash. Restart one more time and it's gone.

Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:11 pm

Error -51 is a file System Error " Reference number invalid".

Exactly what did you (try to) do with Expander 5.5 when the error occurred? If you tried to expand an archive, what kind of archive, where (on which volume) was the archive, and where (to which volume) were the expanded files to be saved?

I think the default in Stuffit Expander (can be changed in its Preferences) is to save the expanded files on the same volume as where the archive is. Can the destination volume be written to from within SheepShaver, does it have enough space left, and does it not have a file system problem? (The file system can be checked with Disk First Aid).

RichardG · Post by **RichardG** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 8:37 pm

I done the unstuffing. The location I set in Expander has 1.5 GB free. I am unstuffing rough 500 MB of stuff. File types are mixed between sit, hqx and bin. I was unstuffing from a 300 MB volume (HFV Explorer) to the boot drive's desktop (the location).

Sat Sep 26, 2009 10:43 pm

RichardG wrote:File types are mixed between sit, hqx and bin.

All three in one single archive? sit.hqx files and sit.bin files were often used, first stuff to compress and then encode in BinHex or MacBinary format to protect the sit files. (Older Mac stuffit formats used resource forks.) I never saw all three encodings in one archive.

I was unstuffing from a 300 MB volume (HFV Explorer) to the boot drive's desktop (the location).

Note that the desktop in Classic MacOS is not one single location. Each mounted drive has its own desktop and the desktop you see on the screen is the combination of all mounted desktops. (This has changed in MacOSX, where the desktop is in fact a folder in the user's Home folder.)
You were possibly expanding the archives to the desktop of the 300MB volume.

Better copy the archive to the boot disk (or another mounted disk image volume) first. (And remember that moving files from a mounted volume to the desktop does not copy the files, simply moves the files to that volume's desktop.)

RichardG · Post by **RichardG** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:22 am

1. No, there were multiple files with types among StuffIt, BinHex and MacBinary.
2. It was the boot drive (in Expander: Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder). No old StuffIt versions were involved (4.0+ I think).

One more thing... In some tasks, SheepShaver (set to 128 MB allocation, any OS) chokes on my PC. Athlon XP 2400+ 2 GHz, 256 MB, Windows XP SP2.

Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:34 pm

RichardG wrote:It was the boot drive (in Expander: Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder). No old StuffIt versions were involved (4.0+ I think).

OK. Maybe you were trying to unstuff too many archives at the same time?
Older Stuffit formats should not be a problem. Successive Stuffit Expander versions have always been backward compatible with previous formats.

One more thing... In some tasks, SheepShaver (set to 128 MB allocation, any OS) chokes on my PC. Athlon XP 2400+ 2 GHz, 256 MB, Windows XP SP2.

I do not have a Windows machine, maybe someone else can comment on stability of SheepShaver on Windows.