Over the last couple of years, I've picked up 5 Lisas and 8 ProFile hard drives. It's been a great learning experience, thanks to several members here and elsewhere.
One of my recent purchases is a ProFile hard drive that worked for the usual 10 minutes before its RIFA capacitor let loose the magic smoke. That was long enough to verify the drive's functionality, confirm that it was already in the LOS 3.1 format, and see that it contains dozens of documents from the late 1980s. Most from LisaWrite, but others as well.
Interestingly, the documents were created by a college professor in Virginia. He was teaching courses about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, as well as math. His course outlines are all on this particular ProFile drive - along with lots of significant personal and family-related documents. Truly amazing that this gentleman was teaching classes about AI and ML in the 1980s. It's a treasure trove of information.
Google searches lead me to believe that he's still alive and kicking at 79 years young. I plan to reach out and offer to send him these documents, but I would like to retrieve and translate them into modern file formats so they are accessible to him.
Questions:
- What is the easiest way to convert files from LisaWrite to file formats that a modern computer can use?
- How should I move files from the LOS 3.1 environment to a modern Macintosh? I can use a 400K floppy disk, but they'll be in the LOS format and Mac OS 9 cannot read them.
Advice would be greatly appreciated.