Getting the data is the easy part. Most 3rd-party floppy drives only support the newer 1.4 MB format and not the 400/800K. If you'd had this problem a few months ago, I could have lent you an ancient Mac laptop--but I gave it away on freecycle a couple of onths ago, not having turned it on in two years. Original Message: ----------------- From: Chris Hoogendyk hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:56:36 -0400 To: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net, ssol at well.com Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] A Tricky Challenge ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee. ** You too can help the group ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. ** If you did, we all thank you. 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> --------------- Erdös 4 _______________________________________________ Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members page on the Hidden Tech Web site. http://www.hidden-tech.net/members -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint