Floppy Disk readable drive for Macs

[klpribula93]

Discovered some more old technology files:

.exe and .pqf

heeelllpppp!!! haha ??

 

[klpribula93]

Update: I finally managed to go through all of the floppy disks I inherited, and I was able to recover 95% of the files that my grandfather saved on these floppy disks. I had a few files that were unreadable, and a few files that were zipped files but Archive utility was not able to open those zipped files, but overall I was able to recover a LOT of photos and some documents. Very excited and happy that I was able to get these recovered after worrying whether or not they're readable on my modern 2019 iMac desktop with a Monterey OS.

 

[Fishrrman]

For the WordPerfect files (.WPD), you might try downloading the free version of LibreOffice.
It can open all sorts of old files...

 

[Janichsan]

late '80-early 1990's? Word Perfect is still around.

Yes, but it uses a completely different format with different file extensions since the mid 2000s. And it was replaced by MS Word pretty much everywhere by the late 1990s. That would also be the time to which I would date these files at the latest.

Also, the files are on floppies...

I have access to all Adobe creative suite. So I would open a .hlg file in Premiere?

Only it it's really a "Hybrid Log Gamma" file, which would be far too modern a thing to find on an old floppy disk.

When it's a HP-GL, as I suggested, it's an old vector graphics format, roughly similar to PostScript. GraphicConverter can open such files.

Discovered some more old technology files:

.exe and .pqf

heeelllpppp!!! haha ??

Exe files are Windows or DOS programs, pqf files are "Presentations" files, essentially an equivalent to PowerPoint from the same company as WordPerfect.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Still a bit confused on how I would open these files. ?

Try opening terminal, and then typing "strings" followed by a space. Then drag the file to the terminal window.

You'll get something that looks like this.

am@MBP14 ~ % strings /Users/am/Documents/GetRegistrationForm.pdf

When you hit return you should get all the readable text that can be found in the file.

For example, the beginning of the results from this PDF file is:

%PDF-1.3
4 0 obj
<< /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >>
stream
=e\6
^Dz 
endstream
endobj
5 0 obj
endobj
2 0 obj
<< /Type /Page /Parent 3 0 R /Resources 6 0 R /Contents 4 0 R /MediaBox [0 0 595.2 841.92]
/Thumb 11 0 R >>
endobj
6 0 obj
<< /ProcSet [ /PDF ] /ColorSpace << /Cs1 7 0 R >> /XObject << /Fm1 8 0 R >>
endobj
8 0 obj
<< /Length 9 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode /Type /XObject /Subtype /Form /FormType
1 /BBox [0 0 1190 1684] /Resources 10 0 R /Group << /S /Transparency /CS 13 0 R
/I true /K false >> >>
stream
ufo/
9};x6
cIoK
Z_3?O
oqyl

There will most likely be lots of clues about both the file type and the contents of the file in these results.

You could also download the trial version of BBEdit and open the files there, but then you'll possibly have to scroll past vast amounts of binary data in search of clues.

‎BBEdit

‎BBEdit is the leading professional text, code, and markup editor for the Macintosh. As the "go to" tool for web site designers, web application developers, writers, and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching...

apps.apple.com

 

[NoBoMac]

Re: strings command: a favorite of mine, but, it's only available if XCode has been installed.