Subject: The Answer! (sort of) Re: ShrinkitGS and forked files-- and XGS
From: Michael Cukan <mcc34@pantheon.yale.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.emulators.apple2
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 17:06:59 -0500
Organization: Yale University
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Hi all,

Well, here is how I managed to unshrink the archive - I downloaded a
binscii'd version of the shrunk archive and used GSCII+ (selecting the
option that saves mac resources onto a separate file); then I was able to
unshrink it with Shrinkit.

Of course, this was a pretty lame solution - I am going to read the site
that Rubywand suggested so I can handle straight .shk files.  But who
knows? Maybe Steve Mentzer is going to add modem support after he gets
hard drive emulation working, and this whole topic will be moot. (By the
way, I just downloaded his port of XGS and it's amazing!!) 

On a somewhat related topic, does anyone know whether Pangea Software, the
makers of Orbizone, is still around? I...ulp...never paid the shareware
fee, being the snotty little kid that I was, and I just wanted to
hopefully make amends, if possible - I just need to know where to send the
fee. If Pangea is defunct, does anyone know the whereabouts of Brian
Greenstone and Dave Triplett, the people behind Pangea? 

Cheers,
Michael

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Rubywand wrote:

> Michael Cukan writes ...
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > I have been trying for the last month to unshrink an archived copy of
> > Orbizone (an incredibly fun shareware IIgs game!) I downloaded from the
> > internet to run on XGS. Unfortunately, after I download the shrunk file on
> > a Macintosh, transfer it onto a Prodos disk, make a disk image of that
> > disk, and convert to .2mg format, ShrinkitGS (running within XGS) will not
> > open the archive because it is a "forked file".
> >
> > What does this mean? I didn't think the game had any resource forks since
> > it is a rather early game, and even so, I thought ShrinkitGS could handle
> > resources.
> 
>      GS-ShrinkIt can unshrink an .shk file which _includes_ forked files-- i.e.
> you will get the forked files which are in the .shk file. GS-ShrinkIt does not
> expect the .shk file itself to be a forked file. (An .shk file is not supposed
> to have a resource fork.)
> 
>      Evidently, the Mac added a resource fork to the .shk file you downloaded.
> 
> 
> > I have also tried Nulib (DOS) to unshrink the archive, which does work
> > (hence my suspicion that there really are no resource forks); however,
> > each file loses its file format information.
> >
> 
>      An A2 ProDOS file will lose its filetype info when dumped onto an MS-DOS
> hard disk because filetype info is not included as part of the file. Otherwise,
> the file should be okay. For some kinds of files, losing filetype may not much
> matter. For instance, an .shk file does not need to have the correct filetype
> to be unshrinked.
> 
> 
> > What can I possibly do to get this beloved game from my childhood to work
> > on XGS?
>  ....
> 
>      I guess you could ask a IIgs user to put the stuff you want onto an 800k
> disk or RAM disk, create a disk image, and upload it to a site or email it.
> 
>      Getting stuff like .shk files from the PC hard disk to an emu disk image
> remains a persistent snag in using emulators.
> 
>      Possibly, you could get your Mac process to work by making sure the .shk
> file on the image does not end up with an added resource fork-- see info on
> ProType on Ground at ...
> 
> ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Mac/ProTYPE11.hqx.docs.txt.
> 
> 
>      Maybe Steve Mentzer, the XGS-32 programmer, will have some suggestions.
> 
> 
> 
> Rubywand
> 
>