HyperCard Mailing List

I have a large Hypercard database which runs my medical practice. No problems since 1997.
I run Hypercard under Sheepshaver on Mac OSX 10.11.6
Since shifting to Sheepshaver (my old Macs finally caput) I have been backing up with Time Machine (stupid me?)
Now I have a single card which has become inaccessable. (Stack has 11,675 cards)
I guess there is a corruption issue.
I can't find a simple way of accessing last week's backup on Time Machine.
Do I completely revert to last wek's backup?
I suppose a repair is also out of the question.
Feeling a bit stuck... or at least cautious about doing things which might make the situation worse.
I am also worried that a corruption issue might eventually "spread"
Any help on any of these issues appreciated.

Try Split & Recover for a start.

http://www3.economy-x-talk.com/file.php?node=split-and-recover

It is probably best to download and open it inside Sheepshaver.

Kind regards,

Mark Schonewille
http://economy-x-talk.com
https://www.facebook.com/marksch

Buy the most extensive book on the
LiveCode language:
http://livecodebeginner.economy-x-talk.com

Op 02-Dec-16 om 10:56 schreef drjohntas@[redacted].com[HyperCard]:
> I have a large Hypercard database which runs my medical practice. No problems since 1997.
> I run Hypercard under Sheepshaver on Mac OSX 10.11.6
> Since shifting to Sheepshaver (my old Macs finally caput) I have been backing up with Time Machine (stupid me?)
> Now I have a single card which has become inaccessable. (Stack has 11,675 cards)
> I guess there is a corruption issue.
> I can't find a simple way of accessing last week's backup on Time Machine.
> Do I completely revert to last wek's backup?
> I suppose a repair is also out of the question.
> Feeling a bit stuck... or at least cautious about doing things which might make the situation worse.
> I am also worried that a corruption issue might eventually "spread"
> Any help on any of these issues appreciated.
>

I had this problem before and solved it by duplicating the stack. The bad card became accessable in the new stack.

Harold



On Dec 2, 2016, at 7:56, drjohntas@[redacted].com[HyperCard] <HyperCard-Mailing-List> wrote:

>
> I have a large Hypercard database which runs my medical practice. No problems since 1997.
>
> I run Hypercard under Sheepshaver on Mac OSX 10.11.6
>
> Since shifting to Sheepshaver (my old Macs finally caput) I have been backing up with Time Machine (stupid me?)
>
> Now I have a single card which has become inaccessable. (Stack has 11,675 cards)
>
> I guess there is a corruption issue.
>
> I can't find a simple way of accessing last week's backup on Time Machine..
>
> Do I completely revert to last wek's backup?
>
> I suppose a repair is also out of the question.
>
> Feeling a bit stuck... or at least cautious about doing things which might make the situation worse.
>
> I am also worried that a corruption issue might eventually "spread"
>
> Any help on any of these issues appreciated.
>
>
>

I would not worry about corruption spreading. It happens to me once or so year and I just revert to a backup.
<http://texworldusa.us.messefrankfurt.com/newyork/en/for-attendees/welcome..html>;

Just on the question of Time Machine, you do know how to use it? Normally you would go to the folder with the current version of the file, then open Time machine, and use the navigation to go back in time. You should only need to go back to the last time that you’re sure it was working ok. Then select the file and do a restore, but restore to some other folder, so that you haven’t overwritten the current stack that you’re trying to fix in other ways.

It could be that under Sheepshaver you’re using a disk image file for the OS9 contents. With the above method I guess you would need to restore the whole image file somewhere. If you were using Chubby Bunny (which is based on Sheepshaver) you could use its folder sharing feature, and then get at individual OS9 files from macOS.

See the April 8th comment here for a link to Chubby Bunny:

https://happymacs.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/sheepshavers-and-chubby-bunnies-the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-classic-on-intel/

Are you familiar with "Stack Analyzer" aka "Lazarus" ? You will lose the
bad card but the rest of the stack will work fine. Contact me off list
if you'd like me to send it your way.

drjohntas wrote:

I have a large Hypercard database which runs my medical practice. No problems since 1997.
I run Hypercard under Sheepshaver on Mac OSX 10.11.6
Since shifting to Sheepshaver (my old Macs finally caput) I have been backing up with Time Machine (stupid me?)
Now I have a single card which has become inaccessable. (Stack has 11,675 cards)
I guess there is a corruption issue.
I can't find a simple way of accessing last week's backup on Time Machine.
Do I completely revert to last wek's backup?
I suppose a repair is also out of the question.
Feeling a bit stuck... or at least cautious about doing things which might make the situation worse.
I am also worried that a corruption issue might eventually "spread"
Any help on any of these issues appreciated.

I remember this from my HC days (almost two decades ago). The good news is that the data is probably all still there. In my experience this is a directory corruption - not a data corruption. As a matter of fact, the card that can not be accessed is “probably” a phantom card.

You should be able to retrieve a recent good stack from TimeMachine, but, if not:

Another way of retrieving the data is to rebuild the stack, card by card, into a new stack (with the same background, of course). Put a button with a script like this in the new stack:

lock screen
set lockMessages to true
go to [the corrupted stack]
repeat with i = 1 to (the number of the last “good” card)*
put i — to show your progress
copy card i
go to [new stack]
go to the last card
paste card
go to [the corrupted stack]
end repeat

* the reason for this,instead of “repeat with i = 1 to the number of cds” is that the repeat loop may not get beyond the bad card. So, do the salvage in two steps:
1. from the beginning to the bad card
2. from the bad card +1 to the end

To find the number of the bad card:

lock screen — for speed
go to [the corrupted stack]
repeat with i = 1 to the number of cds
put i
go to cd i
end repeat

When it stops, i will be the number of the bad card. Note: there may be more than on one bad card.

When you are finished:
1. delete the original first card on the new stack (it will be an empty card, with the script button
2. compact the stack

I know this works, but it has been a long time and my explanation may not have been thorough enough. Please let us know if you need more assistance.

Paul Looney

Hi Cris,

I would love a copy, to have on hand. At the moment, I'm good but
every so often have to deal with corruption on stacks we're still
using.

Tim Selander
Tokyo, Japan

On 2016.12.03, 1:45, CR crrrrrrris@[redacted].com[HyperCard] wrote:
> Are you familiar with "Stack Analyzer" aka "Lazarus" ? You will
> lose the
> bad card but the rest of the stack will work fine. Contact me off
> list
> if you'd like me to send it your way.
>
>

Hi ....it turned out writing a script for a button moving good cards to a new stack worked. Tried the duplicating method but alas no recovery of that lost data.

yes I use Chubby Bunny.. played around a long time on time machine but couldn't get the old data back.. but now that I have ported all the good cards gto a new stack I can cope with one patient's lost data. Luckily I make hand-written consultation notes in case of legal isues.. so it won't be too hard to recreate his records back to the time I stated using Time machine in June this year.

drjohntas wrote:

… it turned out writing a script for a button moving good cards to a new stack worked…

Yes, it was a life saver for me. Glad it was helpful for you.

An important part of the script was the line at the end about compacting the stack. I found that frequently compacting much-used HyperCard stacks almost eliminated corruption. I used some code that compared the “freeSize” with the “stackSize” and when the percentage of freeSize got too big I’d have the stack compact on closing. I don’t remember the exact ratio but it really doesn’t matter now; computers today are so fast that it is possible to always compact each stack as it closes, without much disruption:

on closeStack
doMenu “compact stack”
pass closeStack
end closeStack

BTW, an early warning of a corruption is that the stack will not compact. You can test stacks by going to the message box and typing:

compact stack

Paul Looney