Help: Old Docs, New Mac

[torvan]

Hello Everyone,

Okay, my Mac Plus caught fire and nearly burned down the house (godaweful smell too). So, for Christmas this past year my husband bought me a replacement Mac--this Intel iMac. While I love it, the problem is that I have all these docs written in Word 4 and MacWrite that I cannot load on this machine as it does not support the classic environment and it is questionable if it would even run the software needed for the docs.

And no-Word 2008 cannot read these files either. Nor can Pages, BBEDit, TextWrangler, TextEdit, or MacLink Plus. Both TextEdit and MacLink Plus gave me an output that looked like code to me. But I know Word 4 can as I was editing one of the docs a few hours before the Mac caught fire. (Yes, I left the Word 4 disk in the drive and no, I do not know if this was an evil plot by Microsoft).

So what would you suggest I do to at least get the files to a Plain Text doc that I can then open? 

 

[System6+Vista]

I'd say wait on Craiglist until you find any old Mac (usually can be had for under $10) and then load the files onto it, Open in MS word 4, and save them as text only. Then get an external floppy disk for your new iMac, and the files should look like regular text files. Perhaps there is a more elegant software solution, but to find an old mac (free to $20) and an external USB floppy device ($10 to $30) will definitely do the trick - and you can continue to type on an old mac when you choose.

 

[Scott Baret]

Make sure the Mac you get has a high density drive (sometimes called a SuperDrive). The Macs without SuperDrives are the 128K, 512K, 512Ke, Plus, SE (unless it is marked "FDHD" or "SuperDrive"), and original II. All other beige desktop Macs will include a SuperDrive. (Do not confuse this SuperDrive with the DVD drive used in modern Macs; the name was simply recycled many years later).

Check the classifieds on this forum; a lot of people are selling old Macs right now.

 

[etee]

DataViz claims that the current version of MacLinkPlus/Deluxe (v16) has translators for MS-Word 4.0 as well as MacWrite II and MacWrite Pro 1.0 and 1.5. If you're using MacLinkPlus and it's not working you might want to ping DataViz.

 

[porter]

You could run a Mac emulator, such as BasiliskII or vMac, to get the documents exported as RTF.

 

[macgeek417]

Mini vMac!

 

[joshc]

Going from a Mac Plus to an Intel iMac is quite an upgrade. I think the cheapest (read: free) and quickest method would be to use something like Mini vMac or Basilisk II. Google will help you find guides on how to set these up. There are many archives of Mac software online that have Word and MacWrite (see my signature for a link to Mac Hut, my archive of old Mac software), since USB floppy drives do not support 400/800K floppies (which I assume your version of those programs are on).

 

[Mac128]

Are these files on a hard drive attached to the Mac Plus? Otherwise, you're going to need a way to get them off the 800K disk and the only way to do that is with another old Mac. An old inexpensive Mac Classic would solve a number of your problems. Your disks are likely fine, not being affected by the parts of the Plus which presumably caught fire.

If the files are on a hard drive, you're going to need a way to get them off the drive using a SCSI converter of some sort.

Theoretically, TextEdit in OSX should open both MacWrite and Word 4 documents as RTF files. However you will have to open them via the File command, rather than double-clicking the file or dragging it onto the application icon.

If not, you still need to get the files into your iMac. Once that happens you can use Mini vMac, the best option for this purpose, to directly edit the files in the Mac Plus environment, or export them into your iMac.

 

[joshc]

Are these files on a hard drive attached to the Mac Plus? Otherwise, you're going to need a way to get them off the 800K disk and the only way to do that is with another old Mac. An old inexpensive Mac Classic would solve a number of your problems. Your disks are likely fine, not being affected by the parts of the Plus which presumably caught fire.
If the files are on a hard drive, you're going to need a way to get them off the drive using a SCSI converter of some sort.

Theoretically, TextEdit in OSX should open both MacWrite and Word 4 documents as RTF files. However you will have to open them via the File command, rather than double-clicking the file or dragging it onto the application icon.

If not, you still need to get the files into your iMac. Once that happens you can use Mini vMac, the best option for this purpose, to directly edit the files in the Mac Plus environment, or export them into your iMac.

Since the OP has already tried to open files in Word 2008 and such, it sounds like they already have the files transferred over to their new machine.