MacWrite
Files on 400k Floppy Disks
AppleShare on Old Disk Image
CAD
Drawings on Old Hard Drive
Written
By: Adam Rosen
10 June 2008
Old
Mac File Transfer
& Conversion Services Available
Macs
have been around for a long time, waxing and waning in popularity -
24 years as of this writing. Many people have used Macs in grade school
or college, as business users or personally, and have old data and software
stored on floppy disks, SyQuest cartridges, hard drives, etc.
from these Paleolithic eras in Macintosh history.
I
get regular requests as a Mac consultant and a collector
of old Macintosh systems for help accessing data from past computing
lives. Here are a few tales of old data retrieval that I found interesting,
and which may give you some suggestions for your own file resurrection
needs.
Conversions
and data retrievals may involve multiple hops between machines to get
from point A to point B. The venerable Quadra and PowerBook 500 series
machines contain Ethernet, LocalTalk, SCSI, and floppy drives, which
- combined with their ability to run Mac OS 8 and network with modern
Macs via AppleTalk IP - make them very useful in this process.
MacWrite Files on 400k Floppy Disks
My
client was a college professor looking to reissue a textbook he wrote
in the 1980s. The only electronic copies of his data were original MacWrite
files on Mac 400k floppy disks, and he was looking for somebody who
could read and convert these files to a modern accessible format.
I
received an envelope with four 400k disks. I have several machines in
my Mac Museum that can read 400k and 800k floppy disks, along with multiple
spare external floppy drives, so I figured I'd be successful. The redundancy
proved helpful.
A
couple disks were damaged, with the Finder reporting the disks as unreadable
upon insertion. I hit eject and retried each disk a few times, then
switched to an alternate drive. It took two different machines –
a Mac Plus and a PowerBook 170 - and five different floppy drives to
read all of the disks. Once each disk was accessible I copied the files
to the hard drive for further processing.
Next
step was to open the MacWrite files and convert them to something more
current. In my collection I have copies of MacWrite, MacWrite II, Microsoft
Word v3 and Word v5, all of which can read the original MacWrite format.
MacWrite and MacWrite II can Save As... to Text files, but this loses
all formatting. Word v3 and Word v5 can open and save as RTF or Word
format files which retain formatting, so I chose this option.
I
copied the files from a Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 to a PowerBook
540c running Mac OS 8.1 using a LocalTalk connection; the 540c had File
Sharing enabled, and the Mac Plus can see it as an AppleShare volume.
Once the files were copied to the 540c I opened them from MS Word v5.1a
- a classic! - and resaved as Word 5 format files.
The
Word 5 format is “new” enough that modern Mac versions of
Word can open these documents. Another file transfer was needed, this
time via ethernet from the PowerBook to a G4 Cube running Mac OS X 10.3.9
with Classic installed. Any Mac running Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9 would also
work. Using MS Word 98 in Classic I opened the Word 5 files, then did
another Save As... to the modern .doc format, which
can be accessed by current versions of MS Word on both the Mac or the
PC. I burned all the files to a CD-ROM and sent that to my (happy) client.
Note
that DataViz’ venerable MacLinkPlus
software, bundled free for years with the Mac System Software and ClarisWorks,
also batch performs many of these types of file conversions. Formatting
is adequately maintained - if you have a copy this utility can fill
in for software you might otherwise be missing and save lots of time
- once you get the files off the floppy disks!
AppleShare on Old Disk Image
Data
retrieval tale number two involved making a copy of some older Macintosh
software accessible to settle a legal dispute. I was contacted one day
by a lawyer looking for a copy of AppleShare v1 software, which he needed
to settle a technical matter (lawsuits 20 years later - amazing). I
have a copy of this software in my Mac Software Archives, stored on
a 400k disk image (.img) file, so I was able to assist.
My
client did not have a machine capable of reading this disk image, or
an old floppy disk, but he needed the file nonetheless. I again used
inter-generational Mac networking to complete the task.
First
I copied the disk image from my G4 Cube Server via ethernet to the PowerBook
540c. The internal 1.44MB floppy "SuperDrive" can write (but
not read) 400k disks. Using Disk Copy v4.2, I made a 400k floppy from
the .img file, then ejected the disk and inserted it into my Mac Plus,
which has an 800k drive. This could read the floppy, and I copied the
files via LocalTalk back to the 540c. From there another hop via Ethernet
to the Cube relay station, then a final transfer to my Mac Pro running
Leopard. Now I had a file that I could email to my client.
I
have found that the AppleShare component included in Mac OS X 10.3.x
“Panther” works best to communicate with other Macs running
Mac OS 8, 9 or X. Newer versions of OS X sometimes have some problems
communicating with the OS 8 and 9 systems, but Panther works very reliably.
I have Mac OS X 10.3.9 running on a PowerMac G4 Cube to use as a central
file server for my old systems. For more info on this kind of setup,
see Tips for Working with Vintage
Macs.
CAD Drawings on Old Hard Drive
In
this final tale my client was a machine tool manufacturing company.
They were also involved in a lawsuit and needed printed copies of some
MiniCAD drawings to prove their intellectual property rights. The drawings
were on the internal hard drive of a Macintosh SE running System 5!
They didn’t know how to get the data off the old computer, and
they had no working printer to make local copies.
We
first tried to find an old LaserWriter to print out the files, but several
models obtained (for free) by both me and my client turned out not to
work very well after years in storage. A couple days of crumpled pages
and black streaks caused us to switch to the data transfer route.
My
client was nearby so I drove over with an old external SCSI hard drive
and my trusty PowerBook 540c. I hooked the drive up to the SE, waited
for the pre-System 7 obligatory desktop rebuild to occur, then slowly
copied over the MiniCAD application and all the files. A few damaged
files caused several crashes and reboots (ah, the old SCSI days) but
eventually we got everything needed. I connected the drive to the 540c
to make sure the files were readable, and after another long desktop
rebuild all was well.
The
CAD software was MiniCAD v3, which runs under System 7, so back in my
office I hooked the SCSI drive up to an SE/30 running System 7.5.5.
I opened the files in MiniCAD and exported them all as PICT files (the
only option). If I had a working LaserWriter hooked up to the SE/30
I could have printed the files directly, but since that was a No Go
another machine transfer was needed.
The
SE/30 has an ethernet card installed, so I copied the PICT files via
ethernet back to the 540c, and opened them using Photoshop v4. Now I
could print the files to my current laserprinter. To make them accessible
for my client in the future, who is now using PCs instead of Macs, I
did another Save As… to JPEG format for all the files. MacDraw
II, ClarisWorks or any other capable graphics program of that era would
also have worked.
One
final ethernet transfer via the Cube moved the files to my modern Mac,
and I burned a couple CD-ROMs for my client. Overnight shipping with
the printouts did the rest, and everybody was pleased.
For
more examples of this process, see the Vintage
Mac Museum Blog.
On a related
note, with System 5 this client now holds my Award for Oldest Mac
System Software Still In Use in a modern business application,
besting a previous client using System 6. Anyone out there (besides
collectors) still running anything on System 4 or earlier want to claim
the prize?
Old Mac File Transfer
& Conversion Services Available
This article was also published in the Adam's
Apple column on Low End
Mac
