Although I am a very inexperienced user of the Mac, maybe my experiences with PC to Mac may help you a bit.

A few weeks a go I had the problem that I deleted Stuffit from my SE/30. No hqx,sit nor sea format did help to reinstall stuffit on my Mac. I installed Aladdin Expander 5.1 on my PC. This program handles sit files and has the following option for expanding .sit files:

"Save Macintosh files in MacBinary format":

Macintosh files may contain one or more forks: a data fork and/or a resource fork. To preserver this information, a MacBinary encoded file can be created, rather than just expanding the data fork portion.

Disable the option Expand encoded files and enable the option Continue to expand when expansion results in single file. Still you need to re-expand the resulted file, but finaly you get the .MacBin file.

With the created MacBinary files I was able to install software on my SE/30 that was originally downloaded as .sit file.

Harry Borkhuis

Wezep, Netherlands

On my System 7.1 SE/30, Stuffit Expander 4.x is faster than 5.x. But I've found some files that need Stuffit Expander 5.x. So......

.....Thanks to tips from the Vintage Macs and Classic Macs mail lists, it IS possible to use Stuffit Expander 5 with System 7.1. However, you can not use the installer to install it (you'll get an error saying that you need System 7.1.1 or higher).

My solution: If your using a 680x0, get a System 7.5.3 (680x0) boot disk, (or for PowerMac users, System 7.5.3 (PPC) boot disk), use Disk Copy 4.2 to make a working 1.4 MB boot disk, and boot your Mac with the bootdisk. Now that you're running System 7.5.3, you can install Stuffit Expander onto your HD - I have done this with Stuffit Expander 5.5 and it works. If you want, you can also use Apple's System 7.5 Network Access Disk and Disk Copy 4.2

If you don't really want to boot off a floppy disk, here's another procedure that was provided by Steve Strahm:
1 Download Apple's 7.5 Network Access disk file.
2 Mount the image on the desktop with ShrinkWrap 2.1, using disk not-locked option.
3 Open the mounted floppy and rename the System Folder to be System Folder75 .
4 Rename the HD System Folder to be System Folder71.
5 Copy the System Folder75 from NAD to the HD.
6 Open the System Folder71 and move the Finder into the extensions folder.
7 Reboot, run the Expander 5 installer.
8 Open the System Folder75 and move the Finder into the extensions folder.
9 Open the System Folder71 and move the Finder out of the extensions folder.
10 Reboot.

Or even snazzier, install System Switcher 1.1, and delete steps #6, 8, and 9.

A WARNING to users with a Mac II, IIx, IIcx, or SE/30 that want to run in 32-bit addressing mode (more than 8 MB RAM): Stuffit Exapnder 5 is INCOMPATABLE with Apple's 32-bit System Enabler. You MUST use MODE32 if you want to use 32-bit addressing. MODE32 7.5 is compatable with System 7.1 running System Update 3.0 and Stuffit Expander 5. (I currently have MODE32 7.5 running on my SE/30). What happens if you use Apple's 32-bit System Enabler with Stuffit Expander 5.x? Your Mac will crash trying to decode binhex files. The good news is that MODE32 7.5 Macs won't crash when decoding binhex and unstuffing .sit files with Stuffit Expander 5.x.

(As a side note, Macs running Apple's 32-bit Enabler can run Expander 5 to unstuff files without crashing. But you would need to decode any binhex files with Expander 4.x. before using Expander 5.x - what a pain.)

For anyone who doesn't want to go to the trouble of making a System 7.5 boot disk, I have a downloadable copy of the Stuffit Expander 5.1.2 application, the license agreement and the ReadMe file. This copy of Stuffit Expander 5.1.2 was stuffed and binhexed with Stuffit Classic 1.6 and can be decoded and unstuffed with Stuffit Expander 4.x.

If you want to use any other version Stuffit Expander 5 or higher, however, you will need to use the System 7.5.3 bootdisk method (described above) to install it.