Re: [LUG] 20210412 OT Help please. How to read an old Amstrad file (word type) today?

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Subject: Re: [LUG] 20210412 OT Help please. How to read an old Amstrad file (word type) today?

From: Grant Phillips-Sewell <dcglug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:10:57 +0100

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On Mon, 12 Apr 2021, 19:23 maceion@xxxxxxxxx, <maceion@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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Copy maceion (Gmail) <maceion@xxxxxxxxx>
Dear FOLK,
20210412
Help please
20210412 OT How to read an old Amstrad file (word type) today?

Friend giving talks to a German class has an old talk about travels
through East Germany ( "DDR") by rail in 1960s. Saved to an Amstrad file.

We have tried various ways to read file. It is on a 3" floppy and copy
on is modern computer is unreadable on his computer.

Any way to read file from his computer via some file system or method?

Thanks for help in advance.

Is the old machine still usable?

If so, does the old machine have any kind of serial port?

If so, can the machine be connected to another and transfer the file(s) over a serial line?

If the machine is not usable, can the drive be extracted? There are some good guides online on how to connect up an old CF2 drive to a PC - it connects to a 5.25in floppy connector, not to the 3.5in one, so you'd need a machine old enough to have one of those. There's also mention of some software to read the CF2 disk, but mostly that seems to be because Windows doesn't know how to handle unusual disk formats. If you manage to get the drive hooked up correctly, and Linux sees it as a floppy drive, then I'd say you could probably extract the data from the disk on Linux without the need for strange software.

Grant.