Conversion of large Hypercard Stack to Revolution

[Kee Nethery]

Of course, everything everyone is recommending is against a copy of the original stack. Make a copy, try something, like a compact, and then save that copy. Then use that copy and do a second compact, save that copy, etc. When doing this kind of recover I normally keep a log of the versions and what their lineage is. 

I agree with the "go to card x" test for every card. If you cannot go to every card, you've got a corrupted stack. I've typically found it is a single card and I can grab the rest of the stack by advancing from the first card to the bad card, and then once that dies, advancing from the last card to the bad card. I typically have an exporter pulling all the scripts and card and field definitions for each card into a text file (one per card works for me). Later I build the framework in RunRev and then spin through the text files and import the data into that framework.

I've opened stacks with text editors and have used that to extract data and scripts from the bad cards. The idea of removing NULL characters from the stack using a text editor is not something I've tried before but it seems like it is worth a try. I've found TexEdit to work quite well when opening large stacks. I've not tried TextWrangler or BBEdit but I'm guessing they too can handle mega large files.

Sounds like as a last resort you could hire someone (not me) on this list to do the conversion for you.

Good luck,
Kee Nethery