Okay, it looks like the method that Mac OS 9 uses to preserve resource forks on PC drives isn’t compatible with Mac OS X.

Hopefully the old computer has DropStuff or something similar on it (most do). What you’ll need to do is compress the files before you put them onto the flash drive, and then decompress them again once they’re on the new computer. It’s the exact same process as if you were sending them through the Internet, for the exact same reasons.

If the two computers are next to each other, you could alternatively network the two of them and send the plug-ins through file sharing. It may even be possible to recover the resources from the RESOURCE.FRK folder, but transferring compressed files would be a lot simpler.

On Mac OS 9, insert the USB Drive, select it on the desktop, goto the Special Menu, and select Erase Disk (MAKE SURE NOT TO ERASE YOUR MAIN DRIVE).

This will give you several formatting options. Choose Mac OS Extended, and then hit Erase.

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 01 October 2011 - 03:20 PM

But if you choose that route, be warned that a flash drive formatted in Mac OS Extended cannot be used to share files with a Windows computer.

@david-arthur, on 01 October 2011 - 03:47 PM, said in Needed: programmer to convert OS9 plug to Nova:

But if you choose that route, be warned that a flash drive formatted in Mac OS Extended cannot be used to share files with a Windows computer.

Thanks again guys, I will give it a try and let you know!

Ok, I tried Dropstuff but my OS 9 computer is so old it doesn't have all the extensions it needs! Annoying.

So if I do the other thing, where I reformat the USB key, am I able to format it BACK to being back to be used on Windows, or once I do it does it stay that way permanently?

You can put it back to a format Windows can read afterward. It's a similar process to reformatting for Mac OS Extended, or any other format for that matter. The main difference, I believe, is you have to plug it back into the Windows machine so it can do the formatting.

Just as an experiment, try giving the extension ‘.ndat’ to one of the files from the RESOURCE.FRK folder, and see if MissionComputer opens it.

I keep all my flash drive in FAT32 format, and if you have any way at all of compressing the EVO plug-ins on OS 9, I recommend using them and leaving the drive as FAT32. I suppose you could wipe the drive, format it as HFS+, move the files to OS X, then wipe the drive and format it as FAT32, but that’s less desirable. You could try installing BinHex on the OS 9 machine and compressing the files as .hqx (or .bin.hqx). That should let you transfer them on the FAT32 drive to the OS X machine, and I believe OS X has ways to decompress hqx files.

I have found that the Disk Utility program on Mac OS X does not properly format drives to FAT32 even when it claims to. Specifically, a drive formatted as FAT32 by Disk Utility, in my experience, is not recognized by Windows. I have had much better experiences using Windows to format the drive as FAT32 and then using it cross-platform.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 02 October 2011 - 04:40 PM