PowerBook won't recognize the VST branded Zip 100 drive in the expansion bay. Okay, no problem, just gotta get the driver for that installed.
Oh, the installer is in a .sit archive. Okay, no problem, I'll grab a copy of Stuffit Expander while I'm at it, it's in a .img file that Mac OS 8.6's built in Disk Copy utility should recognize.
Oh, I can't use a USB drive because USB Mass Storage support wasn't built in until OS 9. Okay, no problem, I'll grab the USB Mass Storage driver too while I'm at it, and burn all of this to a CD-RW.
Oh, my particular install of Mac OS 8.6 somehow doesn't include Disk Copy, so I can't access any of the things I just burned to a CD-RW. Okay, no problem, I'll just grab my 8.6 install disc and copy it from that, it's bound to be on there.
Oh, I burned that install disc to another CD-RW which I have since erased. Okay, no problem, I'll just grab the iso for that and burn a new copy.
Oh, it's a .toast image which can only be read by a Mac or PowerISO which I don't have installed. Okay, no problem, I'll boot up my iMac G4 and burn it there.
Oh, the .toast is inside a .zip, and uncompressing a 640mb disc image on a 700MHz PowerPC processor will take ages. Okay, no problem, I'll grab my special OWC drive with USB 3.0 and FireWire, download the image on my Windows machine, uncompress it there, and then take it over to the iMac to actually burn it to a CD, which I will then add to my disc album labeled "Apple Software," so that I can get Disk Copy onto my PowerBook, so that I can mount a floppy disk image, so that I can... I've completely forgotten what my original goal was.
apparently Disk Copy can't open the .img file. Not because the file is corrupted or anything, no, it's because it doesn't have the right kind of metadata, so Disk Copy just rejects it out of hand.
The software for changing this metadata is only available in a .sit archive. The software I need in order to install the app that opens .sit archives.
Gotta love the classic mac scene.
I just HAPPEN to have two SuperDisk drives which are natively compatible with Mac OS 8.6.
I took this drive over to my OS X machine, mounted the .img, and copied the StuffIt installer over to the floppy. Back at the PowerBook, it installed perfectly. No issues.
So, relieved, I go to uncompress the Toast installer. I started extracting the .sit.
The dialogue.
The dialogue tells me.
That it's unstuffing a
.toast file.
of Toast.
They put
They put Toast, the app that you need to open .toast files...
inside of a .toast file.
Fuck the classic mac community