Need help recovering Mac documents from 1988

[dylanclark112]

Hello!

I have just found a boatload of archived documents of an unknown type c. 1988.

I'm pretty sure that they were written on my Mac Plus or perhaps a bit later on my Mac Classic.

Only trouble is, I cant remember the program used to write the files....
Does anyone have a better memory than me? Any ideas on what it possibly could have been?

Any ideas on how to recover? (I have an Intel and G4 machine both running 10.4 to do the recovery on)

I know that they should be text files that are fairly long, but with the MS Word "Recover text from any document" I'm only getting a few lines from the beginning of the document.


Help, me, please....

[mad jew]

Not much help, but does TextEdit get any further? :)

[jsw]

CanOpener (http://www.abbottsys.com/co.html) might be just the app you need. It came in handy for me many a time way back when, although I now have no need for it.

[dylanclark112]

Not much help, but does TextEdit get any further? :)

thanks! alas, it isnt working, just returning a bunch of mumbo jumbo....:(

[PatrickF]

thanks! alas, it isnt working, just returning a bunch of mumbo jumbo....:(

Open a Terminal window and type:


file /path/to/file


Substitute the real path to the file in question. Hopefully this will tell you the type of file you're dealing with.

[thedude110]

thanks! alas, it isnt working, just returning a bunch of mumbo jumbo....:(

A quick Google-around suggests that the dominant Mac word processor of 1987-88 was MacWrite. This link (http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx/TidBITS/Talk/608?50@341.b5t8bZiix87@) has a thread that tells various stories of users who have tried -- with mixed success -- to get at MacWrite files.

You might want to try MacLinkPlus (http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/). If all else fails, maybe stalk the Vintage/Collectors forum and see if you can scare up someone running a Mac SE (http://lowendmac.com/compact/se.shtml). This would give you read access, at least. :o

[Swarmlord]

Almost makes you want to find someone with a Mac Classic to try and open them with just to make sure...

[MonksMac]

Maybe you could try Basilisk II and see if System 7 can open your files?