Try as I might, convincing people to update their documents as they move machines and versions of software forward is a never-ending nightmare. There are always those who are stuck in time. What do I mean when I say stuck in time? Let’s say you write your life story and make several versions of it.
You are meaning to get back to it, but it always gets pushed onto the back shelf. Then you change from a Macintosh to a PC and many years go by. One day you’re sitting there thinking about how you should really finish your work. This is where it gets hard. You thought it was saved in Word 4.0 format. But the file does not show up on your PC. So you ask for my help.
You are meaning to get back to it, but it always gets pushed onto the back shelf. Then you change from a Macintosh to a PC and many years go by. One day you’re sitting there thinking about how you should really finish your work. This is where it gets hard. You thought it was saved in Word 4.0 format. But the file does not show up on your PC. So you ask for my help.
My first thought was that you had transferred the information over to the PC. Old style Macintosh documents will self destruct when moved to a PC formatted drive due to the fact that Mac documents
are two “forks” of information, one being data and one being resource information. Putting these files on a PC rips the resource and data apart, basically destroying the file. So I would need the original Macintosh floppies with the data on them and a machine that could read older data. People laugh when I tell them I have an 8600 Power PC tower sitting next to my computer desk. It runs several different versions of OS 7, OS 8 and OS 9 with software for data recovery. I also have a G4 tower running Tiger, plus an iMac with Leopard and Mavericks. My first attempt was on the G4 tower and a USB floppy reader which did not read the files. They came up with damaged resource files; so it was time to fire up the 8600 and see if it could read the files. (For those of you who haven’t cranked over your old computers in a long time, you’re in for a shock, as few things are what you remember.) I double click on what looks like a ClarisWorks 4 document and MacLink Plus fires up and converts the data to AppleWorks, with the option to save it as aWord file. I save it as both and now I have to get the information to a computer that is connected to a USB drive. Now as it happens, I have a SCSI drive connected to the machine that I can copy the files to. My G4 has a SCSI card in it so I copy the file to the drive then shut down the 8600 and move the drive to the G4 tower. There I can open the files in AppleWorks but cannot move them to a current machine without damaging the resource fork so I then convert the files to Word .doc and .docx files. If I can open them in Microsoft Word for OSX then I can move to the iMac using a flash drive to convert to Office 2004 .docx files. Just to be on the safe side I converted them to Word 07 (PC) files and .docx, plus .RTF just in case. The point I’m making here is that it took several hours plus having to check the files each time I saved to be sure they were readable. Having made sure they could be opened I burned the files to a hybrid CD that both PC and Macintosh computers can read and to a PC only CD in case the story editor had a problem with the hybrid. I created two copies of each disk and gave instructions for the extras to be archived in a safety deposit box. So far I have only heard from the editor once and that was to find out why I used the naming system. Hopefully my old machines will keep chugging along but every thing is slowly aging.
are two “forks” of information, one being data and one being resource information. Putting these files on a PC rips the resource and data apart, basically destroying the file. So I would need the original Macintosh floppies with the data on them and a machine that could read older data. People laugh when I tell them I have an 8600 Power PC tower sitting next to my computer desk. It runs several different versions of OS 7, OS 8 and OS 9 with software for data recovery. I also have a G4 tower running Tiger, plus an iMac with Leopard and Mavericks. My first attempt was on the G4 tower and a USB floppy reader which did not read the files. They came up with damaged resource files; so it was time to fire up the 8600 and see if it could read the files. (For those of you who haven’t cranked over your old computers in a long time, you’re in for a shock, as few things are what you remember.) I double click on what looks like a ClarisWorks 4 document and MacLink Plus fires up and converts the data to AppleWorks, with the option to save it as aWord file. I save it as both and now I have to get the information to a computer that is connected to a USB drive. Now as it happens, I have a SCSI drive connected to the machine that I can copy the files to. My G4 has a SCSI card in it so I copy the file to the drive then shut down the 8600 and move the drive to the G4 tower. There I can open the files in AppleWorks but cannot move them to a current machine without damaging the resource fork so I then convert the files to Word .doc and .docx files. If I can open them in Microsoft Word for OSX then I can move to the iMac using a flash drive to convert to Office 2004 .docx files. Just to be on the safe side I converted them to Word 07 (PC) files and .docx, plus .RTF just in case. The point I’m making here is that it took several hours plus having to check the files each time I saved to be sure they were readable. Having made sure they could be opened I burned the files to a hybrid CD that both PC and Macintosh computers can read and to a PC only CD in case the story editor had a problem with the hybrid. I created two copies of each disk and gave instructions for the extras to be archived in a safety deposit box. So far I have only heard from the editor once and that was to find out why I used the naming system. Hopefully my old machines will keep chugging along but every thing is slowly aging.
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