Programs to create/read/modify Macintosh formats on PCs, and/or vice-versa.

Factual Questions
1

I know that Macs and Intel-based OSes (Windows, Linux, BSDs, Minix, etc.) generally don’t like to play closely with each other, but disks are disks. 3.5" floppies will fit in both machines (depending on the model of Apple, of course, but the Apples I’m talking about have 3.5" drives) and must be physically manipulated the same way.

I know about byte-order issues (little-endian vs. big-endian), differences in filesystems (Macintosh’s fork system vs. the `magic numbers’ used in the *nix and MS worlds), and general weirdnesses, but are these differences reconcilable? Has anyone made a program for PC (any OS) that reads Mac disks, or vice-versa?

I’m not interested in emulation. I’m interested in programs that can get information off disks formatted for `The Other Guy.’

2

I’ve got a number of packages installed on my Linux box that allows me to read various Macintosh file and disk formats. Let’s see…ah, here we go: http://packages.debian.org/stable/otherosfs/hfsutils.html

A quick Google gets me the home page for hfsutils.

3

Macs have a system extension to allow them to read PC formatted (FAT filesystem) disks; it’s been included as part of the MacOS since sometime in the early or mid 1990’s, IIRC.

4

Yes. Pre-OS X Macs had an extension called PC Exchange that allowed Macs to read PC-formatted floppy disks. From the Apple Knowledge Base:

This page is what Apple has up under “Compatibility” for OS X. It talks mostly about networking and little about compatibility with files themselves. Since Mac OS X has done away with the need for system extensions, there is no PC Exchange extension or anything comparable.

A Google search on “PC compatibility” and “Mac OS X” turned up links on Virtual PC. Based on this and the content of the previous link, my guess is that Mac OS X has built-in compatibility with PC files by virtue of the fact that most files traded between the platforms are pretty standard: .mp3, .html, .txt, .doc, .xls, .gif and .jpg, and so forth. Provided the Mac has software installed on it that can handle files those formats (such as MS Office, an mp3 player, and a web browser), OS X doesn’t need add-on software to handle them.

Programs created by applications without a Mac version or that have poor cross-platform file exchanging capabilities will be exceptions, of course. But in my experience, the only popular file format a Mac can’t open or convert is the .exe.

5

And of course with Virtual PC 6, EXE’s are double-clickable applications on a Mac! They start right up in the virtual machine. There’s even a Mac copy of the Windows Start menu in the dock.

What’d be really cool is eliminating (or hiding) the Windows desktop, and having Windows windows float amongst the Mac windows (a la the rootless distro of X11).

6

What they said. Then, on top of that, –

a) you can use DataViz products to convert actual file formats for those occasions when you DON’T have a corresponding application. On the Mac, MacLink Plus lets you convert Lotus 123 or Quattro Pro spreadsheets to Excel format, WordPerfect or WordPro word processor documents to Microsoft Word, AppleWorks, Nisus Writer, MacWrite Pro, etc. formats. On the PC, Conversions Plus lets you access Macintosh-formatted floppy disks (and possibly Zip disks and hard drives, although I’m not sure about that) and also convert Mac formats like AppleWorks, NisusWriter, or MacWrite Pro to MS Word, Lotus WordPro, or WordPerfect; it lets you assign missing 3-letter extensions based on Macintosh FILE TYPE and FILE CREATOR codes, which it can read; and it lets you go the other direction and assign FILE TYPE and CREATOR to pc files you are putting on a Mac-formatted disk.

b) Most graphic formats are x-platform, but to handle the more esoteric ones you’ll probably want a program that works like a graphic Rosetta stone. I can’t recommend a PC product, but on the Mac there’s nothing like GraphicConverter (shareware). If you need to access a “windows cursor” file or a Mac PICT resource or a Windows file icon or a Macintosh image file clipping and convert it to a format supported on the opposite platform, GraphicConverter can do it.

c) Aladdin software makes nice expanders for both platforms that can unstuff, unzip, unBinHex, unTar, unUUencode, unPack, unCompactPro, unDiskDoubler, unLHA, unGZIP, and otherwise decode and decompress compressed file formats, and even mount disk images as virtual floppies. It even seems to know how to reach past “self-extracting archive” .exe (or Mac application) “wrappers” to expand those too.

d) The closest equivalent to VirtualPC to run in the opposite direction is Basilisk-II. It doesn’t emulate a modern PowerMac, it emulates a Quadra (and you have to supply the ROM file, which you extract to floppy disk by running a little utility program on the ancient Quadra that your boss still has in the office supplies closet); however, it emulates one hell of a fast Quadra (using the modern PC processor to push around the MC68040 instruction set and create a hardware abstraction layer that the MacOS sees as Mac hardware). You can run System 7.6 for sure and probably 8.1 on it, and therefore use Mac programs that will run on non-PowerMac hw such as (older versions of) ScriptEditor, GraphicConverter, or SuperCard.