.bin and .hqx problem

[mnlioness820]

I recently got a Power PC Performa 6400/180. OS 8.1 (2gig) I am able to turn it on and get to the desktop. My problem comes when I want to install some programs (that are compatible with OS 8.1) that I have hard drive space for. When I do, the window comes up and says that there is no program for those extensions on the system.

I thought .bin and .hqx comes automatically with the system.

What also complicates matters is that I have no systems disk or any material that came with it, so reinstalling is not an option here.

What should I do?

Thanks!

[DMR]

I thought .bin and .hqx comes automatically with the system.

Nope; at least not with that version of Mac OS. .bin and .hqx files are compressed, so you'll need to get a decompression utility like Stuffit Expander in order to deal with them. The "Expander"-only version of Stuffit was (still is?) a free download, but unfortunately I think you might have trouble finding a download site that has a version compatible with such an old version of Mac OS.

Google for "Stuffit Expander" and see what you can come up with.

[mnlioness820]

Thanks for your advice. I tried it and tried to install but comes up that "not enough heap memory".

I was able to get a system 7.5.5 install disk. Would there be recommendation to reformat the hard drive and using the disk?

[mnlioness820]

a) Found Stuffit Expander 5.5 - worked like a charm.

b) One of my problems was that I was downloading mac programs onto a PC disk using a PC. Found a great shareware program called "Transmac". Switches PC files to Mac readable and Mac files to readable PC.

c) the 7.5.5 disk? Not useable on the Power PC.

Thanks to all who helped! :o

[DMR]

a) Found Stuffit Expander 5.5 - worked like a charm.

Glad you were able to find the right version. :)

b) One of my problems was that I was downloading mac programs onto a PC disk using a PC.

Yes, that's a common stumbling block.

c) the 7.5.5 disk? Not useable on the Power PC.

Nope.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

Wanted to make a brief technical clarification here .hqx is a binhex file... basically the computer file is an application that is pure ASCII. People put the files in this format, because back in the day, email systems didn't handle binary attachments that well, and web downloading was not common, so people were using FTP or Gopher to grab files, and /or modem protocols like Kermit or XMODEM. If you did not set the filetype, your transmission would be distroyed. So, mac people have the .hqx format that protects against the corruption.

Unix people have uuencode, which is quite similar.

Christian