By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on January 7, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, now there’s a silly name. Canaan Banana, that’s another one. Both eminent men in their time and would presumably have met at some point. Baden Baden’s name is so silly they named it twice and to be more accurate it ought to be Baden Baden, Baden. So what about Gumby 50c?
What? Never heard of just about the last remaining free utility for Mac OS X that will make compressed, multi-segment archives? Better look to download it from here then.
Get Stuffed
Back in the good old days real men computed with mice, leaving the PC dinosaurs to clunk along in a twilight world, half DOS, half Windows. Then, the Mac had a steady stream of free compression programs such as Compactor and Disc Doubler. Most were able to make segmented archives which were useful in those days of 56k modems and hard disks with no more space than on an MP’s expenses claim.
Unfortunately, these useful utilities fell one by one, leaving only the venerable Stuffit to take up the strain. As is usual in a monopoly, prices rose and quality lowered such that when Apple wrote an easy front end on their utilities for creating and opening Zip archives in OS X, most Stuffit users told Stuffit to get stuffed.
The one little glitch being that Mac OS X doesn’t have an easy GUI way to make segmented archives. There used to be, as part of Disk Tools, but that feature got left out somewhere around 10.3. Other paid-for programs will do it all but it’s that word ‘paid’ that we are trying to avoid.
Here come the choppers
So you will be relieved to discover that enterprising programmers have opened to door to new ways of archiving. Some, such as DMGConverter and Chop DMG, give Apple’s hdiutil command-line tools a GUI face for hardened mouse clickers.
Gumby 50c on the other hand, takes a whole different approach and wraps 17 utilities into one tiny package.
For my requirements, only the RAR coder/decoder was needed to convert a 700MB file into 70 chunks small enough to send through an iDisk that was chewing on anything larger than 10MB.
Gumby 50c’s interface is a little erratic mainly as it supplies half a dozen ways to do the same task.
As well as the on-screen window with tabs at the bottom and tiny labels
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Jacques Daviault - January 7, 2008 on 9:05 pm
Interesting little software find Mark. I believe a good friend of mine recently sent this to me and I can confirm all your accolades, as well as the relatively few quirks Gumby 50C has. For the price, there is nothing that can touch it, and segmented compressed files at this time (and aside from Gumby) can only be done by pricey software such as Stuffit Deluxe. How long do you think it will be before the Mac OS has this capability built in?
Let’s hope the development isn’t stalled, as you indicated.
As an aside, did you have Gumby and Pokey in the U.K? It was a cartoon staple for the kids in our house in the late 1960’s.
Always a good read, as usual!
Comment by - January 7, 2008 on 11:15 pm
Hi Jacques
I’ve never heard of Gumby and Pokey. The late 60’s I devoted to sailing, Blodwyn Pig and the Doors rather than cartoons. Then I changed to a mixed sex school and the rest is a bit of a blur.
As for it being built into Mac OSX, it is but only through the Terminal. Type “man hdiutil” to see all the various features. But give me a GUI front end any day so I don’t get my fsargs mixed up with my scrubbers.
Comment by Jacques Daviault - January 8, 2008 on 1:39 pm
I’d almost not noticed that you’ve gone off using the Shakespeare inspired headlines. So it is a trend, and not an annoying coincidence. 
Isn’t that funny… I was 8 in 1969, and nowhere near listening to anything of any relevance - I was just exiting my Mary Poppins soundtrack phase I believe. But I was watching Gumby and Pokey, which may not have made it over to your side of the big drink. It was claymation children’s series where Gumby (a rubbery green fellow, and namesake of the software featured in this blog. Gumby pretty much hung around with his faithful pony sidekick and best pal, the orange-coloured Pokey.
Now that I’m all old and grown up I too listen to the music of the 60’s… and 80’s and 90’s and the 00’s. the 70’s, with a few exceptinos seemed ot be a wasteland for music.
That being said, good little piece of software Gumby 50c, but doing any of this via the Terminal is well beyond the graphic designer’s capabilities. Why doesn’t Apple make commonly available a guide to Terminal commands.
(Why am I now expecting to receive a link to said information…)
Off to work I go…
Comment by - January 8, 2008 on 3:18 pm
Why am I now expecting to receive a link to said information
Comment by Jacques Daviault - January 8, 2008 on 4:27 pm
Yes Mark, like those ones. Thanks. I really was hoping to know a bit more about the command line in OSX, there are times when the damned GUI won’t let me do things I know it should and this will only help. Emptying the trash without quitting the Finder to name one, mounting stubborn volumes (CDs) is another.
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