sven@cs.widener.edu (Sven Heinicke) (03/22/91)
"I've been mexed so stuff it."
The quest for Binhex and Stuffit.
It all started the day my mother was shocked by the existence
of a Mac Classic in my house during spring break. It was a trade in
for the Mac Plus that was laying around the house (in questionable
condition). I set it up, put a few programs in it from my fathers job
on my hard disk. Nothing special, a couple of old utilities, and a
few bad games and such. Then spring break ended. I took the mac to
school.
I thought about the plethorah of programs available at FTP
sights, I looked at the only modem I had. And at my lack of all
communication programs. The next day I brought my mac to the lab.
Brendan the sun manager and I FTP to standford and 'get' the document
on how to port the files to you mac. It said that you needed programs
called binhex and stuffit. I was insulted! Then I realized that
stuffit a program, not a insult. I looked around, found binhex and
'get'ted it. Unbinhexed it on the suns with mcvert. The binariy was
mine.
The binhex binary was on the sun, I did a binary transfer of it
to the IBM PC, of which this lab has too many of. Luckly for me, Mac
Classic comes with one of those neat new drives that can read
everything from a 400k disk to a RLO. I up loaded the the binhex from
the disk drive with apple exchange. No such luck would fall on me
that day because it saves it as a data resource only.
I posted my problem, got a few answers like this: "I have this
neat program that should to the trick, just unbinhex the code on . .."
Hmmm, maby I should be a little more explsit in future postings.
I displayed my mac in the lab durning bizzy hours hopping
somebody else that had one would come up to me and ask about it. I
Remembered every mac I had seen in the past year, every person I herd
talk about the mac in the past year and talked to everybody, I felt
like I was starting up a user group. "Do you have stuffit and/or
binhex" I would ask in that order. Got a few "I'll check", a few "I
think so" a lot of "No, but if you ever get those could you give me a
copy". and one bug fat "no" (The only honost person in the group.)
No luck here, bla.
Then one day, there is was sitting, on the back of a backup
disk, on the desk that I never use, behinded the lamp, under papers,
there it was, I newer version of microsoft works. My eyes lighted up,
"communication program" thought I. The answer, the way, the light,
had I been saved?
I found a serial line from the suns. The RS-232 did not quite
fit into the 8-pin minicircular jack on the mac. I took out de'new
_Special_Features_of_Your_Macintosh_Classic_ checked out the macs pin
outs. Took you de'old _Managing_UUCP_and_Usenet_ manual. Got the
RS-232 pin outs. A few stray wires, and I was off, little hacking
I got a connection. Got Xmodem going on the suns, I was a happy hacker.
Got the binhex binary that I had on the suns, xmodemed and started
chuggen. Got UnStuffit, got a MacKermit and away I went.
Now that I am FTPing things I notices that all of the software
I needed was laying around. But still with all the problems I will be
willing to help anybody (well, almost anybody depending on you
political and social view points of the world) get started. Knowing
that you can help a new user is much more furfilling then helping
somebody that thinks za (za = he/she) already knows everything and
knows nothing (or knows nothing and thinks he knows everything (I feel
I need a disclamer after that last sentence)). Thanks for all those
who helped or tried to help.
--
sven@cs.widener.edu Widener CS system manager
Sven Mike Heinicke and Student
(pssmheinicke@cyber.widener.edu (if you must))