Manuel Mejia Jr
- 2001.06.11
Low End Mac is at its best when it
can gather information that would otherwise become lost to history.
Items such as software and hardware vanish as people forget things
or throw valuable books and disks away when they are no longer
needed.
Those Mac users who work with the LEM
Help Desk try to answer questions to the best of our knowledge.
However, we do not know everything. What saves us from the depth of
ignorance is feedback from our readers.
Feedback: Old Files on New Macs
In terms of transferring and transforming old files for use in
new Macs, Mel of the Aloha State (Hawaii) wrote, "If you are lucky
enough to have a SCSI and a USB Zip drive, you can connect the SCSI
drive to any old Mac through the SCSI port and transfer the files
to a Zip disk. You can then move the file to the new Mac through
the USB port." This is a very good point. I myself have never used
a Zip drive.
Low End Mac reader Tod Abbott noted, "ever since the original iMac (Blondi) came out, I run
across an article maybe once or twice a year that implies that
'sneakernet' (floppy disk transfers) is the only way to get data
from an old Mac to a new one." He always sends a comment to the
writer noting other options.
One option that Tod Abbott proposes is a transfer of data from
old Mac to new by direct modem-to-modem transfer. For more
information on this technique, refer to Apple's Knowledge Base
(registration required) and search for
article #22229. People using this method will need to have the
freeware program "ZTerm" installed in order to transfer the data,
since the latest versions of AppleWorks no longer provide a
terminal application for file transfer. Abbott even puts in the
suggestion that one use ethernet to transfer old files to the
modern Mac.
Respectfully, I disagree with Abbott's suggestions in this
instance. His techniques work quite well if the Mac user is moving
whole hard drives worth of information or entire applications.
However, if the Mac user is just trying to get a copy of an old
resume or draft of a will off a backup disk that he or she has had
in storage for several years, setting up a modem-to-modem transfer
or an ethernet system in order to move that file is overkill. The
Mac user that originally proposed the question bought a $15
Classic II off eBay
just to get his data off an 800k floppy. He is probably not going
to go through the trouble of setting up modems or ethernet adapters
just to move his data to his iMac. Floppies are the best way to
handle small documents.
Feedback: Emulating the Apple Menu Under System 6
A LEM reader who goes by the handle "oldtricksagain" reported
that there was a desk accessory that mimics the System 7
Apple Menu Items. It was a shareware item call On Cue. I have not
heard of this disk accessory before and I do not know where one
could find it. For a System 6 user, On Cue may have it uses.
