I may take you up on it. We have known that it is possible, but there is a certain effort vs reward calculation that has not been favorable.
I'll let him know and now that he is sort of retired he may choose to pursue this. There is no rush as he has been living without this data for some time. I know that he bought an Apple IIc on ebay something like 10 years ago, but I don't think he has gone much further than merely booting it. As an academic exercise, it would be interesting to see if it is possible to get the AppleWorks data (word processing documents and primitive database) imported into more modern applications assuming we can move the bits to a modern PC. On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 9:38 AM, John Jardine <[email protected]> wrote: >> My dad has a box of floppies for his Apple IIc, that has databases and >> word processing files. How easy is it for him to get that data on to >> his modern PC? > *cough* I may be able to help you there. > > On Thu, 2011-02-24 at 18:51 -0700, Gustin Johnson wrote: >> If they were well known or named formats it would not be a problem. >> Simon's example is excellent. There is a sea of dead and extinct >> formats from the late 70s through the early 90's. I use the word >> format loosely, as some of these systems were one offs for people like >> libraries, school systems, and mid to large size companies. Perhaps >> you are lucky in that seismic data can be read 50 years later, but >> this is not the norm. >> >> How many of your digital files from the 80s or 90s can still be read? >> My dad has a box of floppies for his Apple IIc, that has databases and >> word processing files. How easy is it for him to get that data on to >> his modern PC? I have personally used utilities like strings to get >> data out of old formats (assuming that I was lucky enough to have data >> in a format that used good ol ASCII) for files I created myself and I >> am only 35. Most of my early university papers are mostly unreadable >> in modern word processors. Ironically, the ones I did in TeX/Latex >> would still be readable if I had kept them. >> >> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 6:00 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Obsolete formats? Please advise which. >> > >> > It happens to everyone in the end... even NASA had issues reading magnetic >> > tapes containing digitised high resolution images from the Lunar Orbiter. >> > >> > That is until some determined engineers got obsessed with the project: >> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_Project >> > >> > Simon >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > clug-talk mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca >> > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) >> > **Please remove these lines when replying >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> clug-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca >> Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) >> **Please remove these lines when replying > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying > _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
