You should use this command when you don't know the blocking factor with which a tape archive was written
Use this as a last resort, to recover the most data from a permanently damaged medium, when a large retry count (rarely used options) does not suffice
UNIX keeps dates in Greenwich time, the Mac in local time. E.g. in Italy you must write 1 in winter and 2 in summer, at New York -5 and at Adelaide 9.30
Just like powering down and up the device, it should forget any error condition (and also any MODE SELECT and similar settings)
This should be less violent then Reset
Not active either because suntar is working or the command is declared unsupported
Not active either because suntar is working or the volume is mounted
Use this menu for operations meaningful only on Mac volumes
Obviously, only for removable disks. On a SyQuest drive, you must manually complete the operation, as you've always done
Meaningful only if the disk contains Mac partitions and is not currently mounted on the Desktop
Meaningful only if the disk is currently mounted on the Desktop
OK, having to select this command is annoying, but now you can't complain with me if you destroy all the data on your hard disk
Use this menu for operations meaningful only on SCSI disks
Usually it's not needed, but just in case, you may tell suntar that the reading head is currently positioned just before the first block of the data you want to read, or where you want to write
some units interpret this code as Retension, others as Eject
Usually filemark are written automatically, but if you need to add one more...
...and this one prepares suntar to work on previous archive (it's a rewind if you're already on the first archive)
Filemarks are used to separate different archives on the same tape, so this command prepares suntar to work on next archive
Use this menu for operations meaningful only on tapes
Creates a new file in one of these formats: MacBinary, Binhex 4.0, uuencode
Do not do anything
The standard way, under System 7 it marks out bad sectors, but it must read the whole disk to find them
No check for bad sectors, so be sure this disk is error-free
Text files are written as ASCII, other files as MacBinary unless they're obviously anonymous binary files (no resorce fork and type '????' or 'BINA')
For Mac->Mac transfers you will want to check this: the most notable difference is that all informations of folders are saved, but only suntar 2.1 or later can restore them
Extracts and converts files starting from a given sector: useful for a partially defective archive, or as another way to select files
Same modern versions of tar support the POSIX format for pathnames longer than 99 characters, and GNU tar 1.11 has its own format for the same purpose. Check this if such extensions may be used when creating tar archives
Opens a device, either through its device driver (the standard software interface to it), or (for SCSI devices only) by direct communication with the device itself
Creates a new empty archive (tar or bar) and activates the items in the Write menu
MS-DOS disks are very commonly used, even if MS-DOS is totally obsolete and is the worst operating systems available today (please don't tell me that CP/M is even older and worse!)
The log file maintains a copy of all what is sent to the console
Text files are written as ASCII, files with a resource fork in MacBinary, other files as data fork only
Selected files will be written to the archive
The currently displayed file names will be transferred to another list which allows multiple selections
Same as the Abort command, which may be selected from the File menu, but many Mac users believe that menu commands can't be used during any dialog and they feel the need for this button
In order to save following files to a different folder or a different volume
Disables BinHex, Macbinary and ASCII conversion
Sometimes ignoring illness symptoms saves you from worrying and paying the doctor. Other times, it's catastrophic…
Get a list of the contents of a disk before starting to write on it, with the opportunity to eject it. Useful if the external labels of your tar disks are not up-to-date
Only for bar and GNU tar archives, assigns a label to the archive (on the UNIX side it's the V option). Must be used before writing any file
Similar to text creator, but it's the creator of GIF files (if you happen to download them, otherwise it doesn't matter)
It's essential for the ease of use of suntar that you write here the creator of your favourite editor or word processor (discover it by Get File Info…), and you'll be able to double-click all extracted text files
Removing/replacing all those characters will alter horribly some file names, but without doing that you'll have troubles to handle the files in the UNIX shell, unless you enclose names in quotes, or use escape sequences (\*,\? …) or you use a GUI
For a long time UNIX did not accept file names longer than 14 characters, but almost all modern versions have removed that limit
Keeping prefs inside the application avoids one more file in your crowded System Folder, but can't be done if suntar is shared on a network
Check it if you want to set the modification dates of text and binary files at the same value of the creation date rather than the current date
Single-volume tar archives are all compatible, but for multi-volume archives there are two different standards, and many systems support neither of them: you must tell suntar which standard is used by your tar utility
The changes will be discarded
The changes will be remembered even if you quit the application
The changes will be valid only until you quit the application
This gives you some informations about a Mac file: any file, but suntar tells more about files in the formats which it can open
Uncheck it if you want to choose the conversion to be performed rather than let suntar recognize the file format automatically
If you've changed your mind, or can't find where you've put that disk…
This is a semimodal dialog: it can be moved, and almost everything can be done while it's on the screen, but without closing it or pausing you can't bring the console window to front
Continue as List, but selection of Confirm saves returns to the current mode for further files
Temporarily save everything, but may return to Confirm saves later
This file will not be saved
This file will be saved
Writes the selected folder with all its content, obviously including subfolders with all their content
Click here and files extracted by suntar will go into the folder which is currently displayed
Appends all the content of a file in tar/bar format, without any further file conversion (file headers are copied as they are)
Use the mouse to select files. Doing that with the shift or command key pressed allows you to select nonadjacent files or to deselect one of the selected names
If no file need be extracted from this archive…
Extracts all the selected files; for POSIX tar archives, it's used also to eject the disk and continue with next disk
It allows you to select many files specifying the name in either Mac style (the string is contained in the file name) or UNIX style (with * ? and even [] having the well known meaning)
Suntar is working, wait !
View, Read tar, Read bar and Expert list are often repeated on next sector, file or disk: type cmd-H and that's done.
For POSIX tar users, it's also the only way to do an Expert List of multivolume archives
Like List, but prints more informations and does not follow multivolume archives
Extract a single file whose bar header is at a known sector
Extract a single file whose tar header is at a known sector
Reads all sectors on the disk looking for tar or bar headers; may find good files which List can't see (on a crashed or partially overwritten disk).
Since it tells about unreadable sectors, may be used as a Find bad sectors too
Prints informations about the drives and devices connected to your Mac (they may be opened by the Open device command)
Transforms a non-Mac initialized disk to a Mac disk by performing the last step of initialization (beware, in fast mode the disk verification is not performed, hence bad sectors are not marked)
The reverse of Save sectors: copies data from a file to the disk, without any header and with no conversion
Copies sectors to a regular Mac file, without any conversion
Clears a sector: a null sector is the end-of-archive marker.
With Option key, clears multiple sectors.
For files, it optionally truncates the file (so this really becomes the end)
Prints the content of a sector in ASCII (and hexadecimal for non-ASCII bytes). All Hex if the option key is pressed
Transfers a tar/bar archive from disk(s) to a Mac file in tar/bar format without extracting nor converting its content
Use this when you want to extract some files, but not all, and you don't like the "Confirm saves" way to do that. When the selection dialog is on the screen, this brings it to front
Use these commands if you are an hacker or need a disk doctor for tar/bar disks or files. Beware: further data will be entered in UNIX style, from a prompt in the console window
Use this when you have completed your archive; anyway, you may add further files by the Append command
This adds files in the MacBinary format: no information is lost, but only a Macintosh with a MacBinary converter (e.g. suntar) may see it as usable data.
Use this to add a file which is already in UNIX format
Select New (tar or bar), Create tar archive, Create bar archive or Append in order to use this menu item
Use this menu to write files to a tar/bar archive
Check this item if you are an hacker or need a disk doctor which knows about tar and bar archives
Verify the data written to the floppy disk; it's slower but safer (but it does not avoid all problems, e.g. a misaligned disk head can't cause problems until you try to read the disk in another machine)
If not checked, files shorter then 80 bytes are not examined to see whether they are UNIX-like ASCII text and are always saved as binary files and never converted to Mac-like ASCII
Check this if you want to choose files to be extracted
The current language is English
La lingua corrente è l'italiano, però i menù e gli altri fumetti di aiuto esistono solo in inglese. Tradurli al volo sarebbe un problema tecnico non facile…
Now, long lines wrap to the following line
Now you are in horizontal scroll mode
Use this to change the appearance of text and the behaviour of extractions
Use this menu to manipulate text in the console window
Blanks and initializes a disk, erasing its previous content. Unlike what happens under the Finder, you may create 720 Kbytes disks
Open a disk as an empty bar archive and be ready to append files and folders to it
Open a disk as an empty tar archive and be ready to append files and folders to it
Add files to the end of an archive; for a multivolume archive, you must insert only the last disk (unless you use POSIX tar)
The most useful and most used command, it extracts files from a tar or bar archive with automatic recognition and conversion of text, MacBinary and BinHex files
Select this if you want to know which files are in your tar or bar archive
Use this to eject the disk and close it: cmd-shift-1 works, but it does not close the disk, use it only during pauses if you want to insert the disk back later
Opens a file in one of these formats: tar, bar, MacBinary, BinHex 4.0, UNIX-wise ASCII, PackIt, uuencode.
In order to open a floppy disk containing tar or bar archives, just insert it in a drive, or select a command (e.g. List) when nothing is open
Use this menu to open files, extract or create UNIX archives, pause suntar or exit from it
This freeware program is the simplest and cheapest way to exchange data between a Macintosh and UNIX machines without sophisticated hardware: just use 3.5" floppy disks !
