[Hidden-tech] A Tricky Challenge…

[Chris Hoogendyk]

Steven Solomon wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I've got a challenge for the really geeky Mac pack-rats out there. I 
> just moved and ran across a long lost micro floppy with some documents 
> from roughly 9/90 to 9/95. They are likely created in 
> MacWrite, MacWrite II, and MacWrite Pro. The disc is double sided, but 
> not HDD, and drives that will read this ancient and intermediary 
> format are pretty rare. Somewhere in my piles of unpacked boxes are 
> the original applications discs, but I'm not sure I'll come up with 
> them any time soon.
>
> So, what I seem to need is somebody with a really old Mac, likely able 
> to run OS8 or before, and an ancient microfloppy drive. With that set 
> of tools, I figure we can convert these files to RTF or plain text. 
> YES, Dancer Computers, and others no longer have the tools. Most of 
> the folks at these places are too young to even remember MacWrite.
>
> So, if you know anybody that can help with this problem, pass the info 
> along, or at least enjoy this stroll down memory lane to the days when 
> MacWrite was a revelation.

So, you have 2 issues here. One is the drive, the other is file formats.

The file formats solution is DataViz's MacLinkPlus Deluxe 16 (been 
around a long time to get up to 16).

Anyway, you can find it at the following link. The second link is a 
short list of formats it can deal with.

http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html

http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/mlp_xlators.html

I've used this for years, and bought the new version for my daughter 
when I decommissioned her old Quadra630 running Mac OS 8 and got her a 
new iBook running Mac OS X a couple of years ago. It allowed her to grab 
all her writing from backups of the Quadra630.

As far as diskette drives go, they are the sort of thing that tends to 
fail after a few years. However, I think you can still get one and you 
can get it as an external USB drive. Just for example:

http://www.amazon.com/TEAC-External-Floppy-Drive-FD-05PUB/dp/B0007VE044

I haven't researched or tested this, I just did a quick search to 
confirm availability. There are many more besides the one above. Try to 
compare, look for reviews, etc.

As far as compatibility issues with 3.5 diskette formats go, there is 
probably more than you want to read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

HTH


---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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Erdös 4