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Reading old macintosh discs

Sharp10rSharp10r Registered User regular
edited September 2010 in Help / Advice Forum
My late mentor left behind a bunch of discs from his days in school. When I put them in my PC disk drive, it thinks the disks aren't formatted.
They're from around 94+ and he used Macintoshs (I think he'd be thrilled if he knew how ahead of the curve he was with his love for Apple- HA).
What's the easiest way to get the information off the disks?

Sharp10r on

Posts

  • EshEsh Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles. Portland, ORRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Sharp10r wrote: »
    My late mentor left behind a bunch of discs from his days in school. When I put them in my PC disk drive, it thinks the disks aren't formatted.
    They're from around 94+ and he used Macintoshs (I think he'd be thrilled if he knew how ahead of the curve he was with his love for Apple- HA).
    What's the easiest way to get the information off the disks?

    Buy an old working Macintosh.

    Esh on
  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    There are programs that you can use that will read them. Last time I used one was years ago because I wanted to play Marathon on Aleph One.
    HFVExplorer is the name of the program recommended. You can get it at http://gamma.nic.fi/~lpesonen/HFVExplorer/
    Hope that helps.

    L Ron Howard on
  • baudattitudebaudattitude Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Some of it depends on how old the Mac disks are. Really REALLY old Mac discs put more sectors per track on the outer tracks than on the inner tracks, which meant that it could pack 800K per 3.5" floppy instead of 720K per floppy on the PC (or Atari ST). Amigas used a similar trick to get 880K per floppy.

    If it's one of those, uh, I remember that they used to sell custom controller boards that would handle reading them on a PC, but otherwise you're not going to read them without a Mac of appropriate vintage.

    Fortunately, when the industry moved to high density 1.44MB floppies and squeezing every spare byte out of a disk was no longer necessary, Mac disks became readable on PC drives, albeit with custom software like LRH recommended.

    By 1994, they should all be of the latter variety, but if this was in an educational environment... there were an awful lot of old macs hanging around.

    If the floppies have a square hole in both top corners (one being the write protect tab, with a slideable plastic bit that can block or open the whole) they're probably 1.44MB floppies and you can probably read them with software.

    baudattitude on
  • Sharp10rSharp10r Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    YES! THank you. I can now see the files- I just don't know how to open them. A double click tells me "There is no file type mapping from (AWWP, PSIP). Please define it in the dialog that will open next." Then some screen pops up and I have no idea what it is telling me to do.
    THanks for the help all. It feels good to be closer to reading the stuff I thought was lost.

    Sharp10r on
  • corcorigancorcorigan Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Try opening them with notepad or an equivalent and see if you can see any useful text in there. Otherwise you'll have to find a suitable program to open them with...

    corcorigan on
    Ad Astra Per Aspera
  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    edited September 2010
    Sharp10r wrote: »
    YES! THank you. I can now see the files- I just don't know how to open them. A double click tells me "There is no file type mapping from (AWWP, PSIP). Please define it in the dialog that will open next." Then some screen pops up and I have no idea what it is telling me to do.
    THanks for the help all. It feels good to be closer to reading the stuff I thought was lost.

    MS Works for Mac; try opening them in Open Office.

    evilmrhenry on
  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    edited September 2010
    evilmrhenry wrote: »
    Sharp10r wrote: »
    YES! THank you. I can now see the files- I just don't know how to open them. A double click tells me "There is no file type mapping from (AWWP, PSIP). Please define it in the dialog that will open next." Then some screen pops up and I have no idea what it is telling me to do.
    THanks for the help all. It feels good to be closer to reading the stuff I thought was lost.

    MS Works for Mac; try opening them in Open Office.

    Yeah it looks like the PSIP is a doc file, though I'm not sure if it's a document or a preferences file.

    The AWWWP seems to be a media file - music or video. Try Media Player.

    MichaelLC on
  • osnolaosnola Registered User new member
    edited September 2010
    Just a precision, if these files have been created on a Mac with MSWork, Open Office will not read them (it can only open PC MsWorks files) but MacLinkPlus Deluxe seems to be able to read mac MS Works 3.0, 4.0 files ( see download.dataviz.com/pdf/quickstartbooklets/mlp_gsmanual.pdf ).

    osnola on
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