Retrieving old LCIII data

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I have an old LCIII with several large word files I would like to transfer to a G5. (Actually the ultimate goal is to get them to a PC, but I figured that could be done via Email.) Anyone have an idea?
 
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I have a similar problem - a floppy full of old Mac files from 1995 that I would really like to get onto my G5, but of course, it doesn't have a floppy drive, and my PC won't read the format.

Perhaps the solution to both problems (and the reason I bring this up) is to find an external USB floppy drive that works with Macs, place your files onto a floppy (the LCIII has a floppy drive as I recall) and read it with the new drive.

Would any readers be familiar with an external floppy drive that is supported by Macs? What file format did Mac OS use? Can Mac OS X still read it?
 

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I have a similar problem - a floppy full of old Mac files from 1995 that I would really like to get onto my G5, but of course, it doesn't have a floppy drive, and my PC won't read the format.

Perhaps the solution to both problems (and the reason I bring this up) is to find an external USB floppy drive that works with Macs, place your files onto a floppy (the LCIII has a floppy drive as I recall) and read it with the new drive.

Would any readers be familiar with an external floppy drive that is supported by Macs? What file format did Mac OS use? Can Mac OS X still read it?

Years ago, I ran a Mac emulator on my Amiga called "Shapeshifter", and as I recall, the biggest problem was getting it to read/write Mac floppies because the Mac had some sort of proprietary variable-speed floppy drive.

I believe later in the classic Mac line, capability was added to read/write/format MS-DOS compatible floppies. If you have a working machine, I would check to see if it's capable of doing so. I know that a USB floppy drive, attached to an OS X machine will easily read MS-DOS formatted floppies.
 
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But what about Mac OS formatted floppies? I don't know what format they used, but I know that it was not FAT (MS-DOS format). Does anyone know of a USB floppy drive that will read these things?
 

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But what about Mac OS formatted floppies? I don't know what format they used, but I know that it was not FAT (MS-DOS format). Does anyone know of a USB floppy drive that will read these things?

I know what you meant - what I was trying to say is that even if you had software that could read the format of the disks, I'm not sure that you could find the hardware to spin them properly. Modern floppy drives (and even those from years past) usually read data at a consistent spindle speed. What I was getting at is that I believe even the older Macs could format/read/write MS-DOS disks. If you can find an old Mac to read the disk, you could potentially copy the data from the Mac disks over to its hard drive, then copy them back to an MS-DOS formatted floppy.

Maybe I'm making this more complicated than it should be. There must be a way to read those disks.
 
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I have an old LCIII with several large word files I would like to transfer to a G5. (Actually the ultimate goal is to get them to a PC, but I figured that could be done via Email.) Anyone have an idea?
Does the LCIII still have Word in it? If so, can Word save a file as plain text?

If not, maybe you could try copying one to a TeachText or SimpleText file (increase the app's RAM in Get Info), then transfer that to a floppy formatted for IBM clones (using the old terminology).

Even if this works and the PC has a floppy drive, you'd lose the document's formatting.

The LCIII might be running HFS (hierarchical file system), not HFS+, and I can't recall whether a newer Mac with HFS+ could read it anyway.
 
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George, I may have found the answer. This page:

http://www.emulators.com

has lots of SoftMac type stuff, for doing Mac stuff on Windows. One of the key elements is Gemulator Explorer, a Windows program that will read Mac formatted floppies. From the sounds of it, we are not talking Apple ][ era floppies (I do believe those were the variable speed ones) but for your LCIII, Quadra 605 and so on, it just might work.

So, if your files are not too large, write them out to floppy, transfer the floppy to your PC and try out Gemulator Explorer. I will be doing a similar thing shortly to see if I can read my old floppy of Mac stuff (originally created on a Quadra 605 I had at work way back when...).

Good luck!
 

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