OS 9/OS X path incompatibility

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2014, May 3 - 8:35pm

papa

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Joined: 2014 May 2

OS 9/OS X path incompatibility

I Mac has OS X 10.4.11 installed, but I am looking for classic Mac programs that I can run with Classic on OS X or by rebooting to OS J1-9.2.2, which is also installed on the hard drive.

I have found a couple of programs here where after I've unpacked and uncompressed the archive file to my Mac's hard drive, running the programs produces an error window with a message like, "The path 'Mac OS 10.4.6:...' contains a slash (/), backslash (). or period (.). Please remove the character from the appropriate Folder's name and try again."

I assume it's a classic Mac program complaining about the periods in the "Mac OS 10.4.6" segment of the path, which is the label on the Mac's hard disk.

Is there a way to fake out these classic Mac programs into thinking their being run from a path that satisfies OS 9 restrictions? Surely it's not safe to rename the hard disk.

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2014, May 3 - 8:42pm

Temporary Joe

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Joined: 2009 Nov 14

Do any of your folders have a ".", "\" or "/" in the name? If so, rename them.

2014, May 3 - 9:20pm

papa

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Joined: 2014 May 2

Only the root folder for the entire hard drive. But surely a lot of the current configuration depends on "Mac OS 10.4.6" being the name of the hard disk, and that configuration would all break if I just renamed the hard disk, wouldn't it?

2014, May 3 - 10:57pm

(Reply to #3) #4

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

Try renaming the drive to something else with no spaces and no periods. Though spaces can be used, I prefer not to if running unix variant OS's. Underscores "_" & dashes "-" are safe to use as word separators in filenames. For example; deni-x

Changing the name of the hard drive won't upset anything (except maybe open documents if any, close these first). You can always change the name back again if you need to.

2014, May 5 - 4:26am

papa

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Joined: 2014 May 2

Wow, it works!

There was just one small temporary hitch: the system (OS 9, I didn't try it with OS X) won't let you change the name of the hard disk while file sharing is on.

The solution I found was to run File Sharing from the Control Panel, then on the Start/Stop tab click the Stop button in the Share Files section (apologies if the names are off: I'm translating the labels from the Japanese version). This allows you to change the name of the hard disk on the desktop just like any other file or folder. After changing the name, click the Share Files Start button and everything will be back to the way it was with the renamed hard disk.