Re: IIgs / Newbie question(s)

[CUTjblakeney@sympatico.ca (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Fri, 24 May 2002 00:05:51 -0400, tarage
<tarage@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:

>GS/OS is totally different from PRODOS in that a file has two forks, 
>like the Mac OS -- a data fork and a resource fork. Because of that, I 
>don't think any 8-bit Shrinkit programs will expand GS/OS files (at 
>least I haven't found one that will). A good program that does however 
>is GShrinkit, and it's available from Ground or Trenco. It's usually 
>available as a BXY file, so you'll need to get the GscIT NDA first, 
>which decodes those type files. Once you decode it, you'll get an SEA 
>for the IIGS which expands to GShrink. Note: if the SEA doesn't work, 
>you hit some file corruption along the way -- there's nothing wrong with 
>   your hard drive.

<NITPICK>
Not all GS/OS files are extended files (ones with both a data fork and
resource fork) so the 8 bit ShrinkIt can be used to unpack some IIgs
specific archives.  ShrinkIt will let you know if it can't unpack an
extended file.

BXY is a ShrinkIt file (SHK) in a Binary II wrapper (BNY) and can be
unpacked with ShrinkIt (although not extended files which GSHK is) and
GSHK so there is no need for another utility.  You are probably
thinking of a ShrinkIt file (with or without a Binary II wrapper)
encoded with BINscii (BSQ) or just a plain BINscii encoded file (BSC).

GscIT doesn't exist, as far as I know.  :-)  However, there is the
GScii+ NDA and an 8 bit program called BscIT that can decode BINscii
files.  There are other utilities that can do this as well.  Spectrum
can encode/decode BINscii and other formats and I believe the
StolenBASE NDA can as well.
</NITPICK>

-- 
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in the
                 Apple II Community on Syndicomm.com
 CUT the obvious from my address if you want to e-mail me