Macintosh Plus help!

larryj · Mar 22nd, 2009, 02:29 PM

Hello,
I'm new here and hopefully ignorant of this world. I have documents in Word6 on a MacIntosh Plus (68030 Power! - if that means anything) that I would like to download so that I can email them to a scholar in Europe, but my laptop is a PC. Is there a means to establish communication between these systems?

Kazak · Mar 22nd, 2009, 06:42 PM

I'm working from memory here, but if you have a floppy disk formatted for MS-DOS, you might be able to copy your files to it. Then someone with an older PC can either a) email the files for you, or b) burn them to a CD that your laptop can read.

There are other ways, but I'm not sure how you'd get a Mac Plus on a network these days.

Maybe you could have a student transcribe the files for you, depending on their length, of course.

By the way, this thread should be moved to the Mac & iPod Help & Troubleshooting forum, where you would get better and faster answers than mine.

The G3 Man · Mar 22nd, 2009, 08:48 PM

if yur in Toronto, PM Me. I have a Macintosh Plus and a beige g3 with a usb card. I 1. insert floppy with files from the plus into the G3

and then I put it onto a flash drive from there.

Morgan

CanadaRAM · Mar 23rd, 2009, 11:23 AM

The MacPlus has an 800 KB DSDD floppy drive that IIRC can NOT write or read MS DOS formatted floppies. Later 680x0 Macs had a "SuperDrive" (notice how Apple recycled the name?) which could read and write DSHD 1.44 MB disks and MS-DOS disks.

As mentioned, the easiest way is to find someone with a beige G3 Macintosh, which can read the old 800 Kb floppy format and write to 1.44 floppy, or to CD-R (if the CD drive had been upgraded) or email the file to someone.

An alternative would be to hook up the Mac to a phone line with a modem, and see if you can get a vintage email program or FTP running. Or use a null-modem serial cable and hook it to another machine and FTP it. This requires digging up some antique software and instructions.

(The MacPlus was a 68000 machine - the sticker you have on it that says 68030 Power! is either a random thing, or the MacPlus has had some funky 68030 accelerator card installed in it)

Kazak · Mar 23rd, 2009, 01:57 PM

Thanks for the correction, CanadaRAM. As I said, I was working from memory (which becomes a scarier proposition with each passing year). I was thinking, too, that the '030 seemed a bit advanced for the Plus.

gordguide · May 20th, 2009, 12:31 PM

" ... Or use a null-modem serial cable and hook it to another machine and FTP it. ..."

A regular Mac serial cable should work fine, no null-modem version required unless it's PC to PC.