Post #1868571

2025-03-27 04:25 UTC

I noticed the retro Mac community was working on #GlobalTalk and although I&#39;m not working on anything, I thought I&#39;d contribute this suggestion: If you&#39;re using AppleShare on Mac OS 7.6 or later, you might want to use the AppleShare client extension that shipped with Mac OS 9.2.2. That&#39;s AppleShare version 3.9.2. One of the last things I worked on in Mac OS 9 was the AppleShare client that shipped in Mac OS 9.2.2. The AppleShare team had moved on to work on Mac OS X and because I&#39;d supported AppleShare while in Developer Technical Support and had worked on the AppleShare client for Mac OS 9.0 to make it work with the File Manager changes in 9.0, I got the job. The bug I was given to fix was poor Finder performance when a user opened multiple directories simultaneously on an AppleShare volume. However, after fixing that bug, I kept going. :) What follows in this thread is a list of things I changed: #GlobalTalk #MARCHintosh 1/5 🧵

Replies (7)

@jimluther@techhub.social 2025-03-27 04:26

* I added multiple AFP enumeration caches (16 of them) so when multiple directories are simultaneously being enumerated with GetFInfo or GetCatInfo, those enumerations were not throwing out each other's data. This was the bug I was supposed to fix. * I noticed the enumeration caches were small (512 bytes) -- the same size they'd been since 1987 when memory was very tight on a Mac. I increased size of those enumeration caches. The result is enumerating larger directories is done with fewer transactions with the server. 2/5 🧵 #GlobalTalk #MARCHintosh

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@atlauren@mastodon.social 2025-03-27 05:34

@jimluther very very cool! Someday I hope to find and thank your colleague who fixed WebDAV in the Finder. :) https://tidbits.com/2012/06/18/mac-os-x-10-7-4-finally-fixes-webdav-and-idisk/

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@tevruden@nonexiste.net 2025-03-27 05:35

@jimluther So I kinda want to know how much of this did you remember off the top of your head and how much was in notes you had? I don't have codebases I've worked on quite that old YET (its only a decade and a half) but it stuck with me a lot longer than I thought it would when I wrote it.

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@takeitev@mastodon.social 2025-03-27 06:43

@jimluther I don’t remember what I did back then, you must keep good notes ! :-) thanks for sharing

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@dmark@hachyderm.io 2025-03-27 09:56

@jimluther amazing story, thanks for saving the world countless cumulative hours of headaches with your hard work! As a developer/maintainer of #netatalk I use the final OS9 AppleShare client as my reference point when making sure we don’t break AFP 2.2. We’ve had to do a multitude of workarounds for bugs in earlier “classic” versions of the AppleShare client. It’s been an emotional roller coaster ride. :)

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@rtlc@mindly.social 2025-03-27 18:38

@jimluther this is such a fascinating thread. Thank you for sharing.

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@arroz@mastodon.social 2025-11-24 08:31

@jimluther I’m amazed you still remember all this with such detail. 😄 Thank you!

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