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Word Processing on the Apple //e

gladders

Member
Joined
Oct 7, 2015
Messages
35
Location
London
So I recently acquired a lovely //e with 128k, 80 columns, a Softcard clone and a Floppy Emu. All set!

I was hoping to use this machine as a word processor, 'distraction-free'.

Is there any way to save, say, Apple Writer 2 files to a Floppy Emu disk image and then have that converted to a text file for modern Microsoft Word to edit?

Or alternatively, a means to have the Apple //e 'print' to a plain text file on my modern laptop?

Thanks :)
 
run Wordstar instead, seeing that you have z80 card already.

And what does that mean? Is it natively supportive of Word?

Does it allow me to swap to a blank floppy to save, or do I need to have two floppy drives? Ideally the former...
 
And what does that mean? Is it natively supportive of Word?

Does it allow me to swap to a blank floppy to save, or do I need to have two floppy drives? Ideally the former...

I think Word 2003 was the last version to include WordStar import. With newer versions, you would need either a WordStar stripping utility which removes all the special codes or use OpenOffice to convert the WordStar document into something available to Word.

Could you describe the modern system in detail? Very recent hardware might have problems reading the disk Softcard CP/M produces. I think the easiest connection method is over a serial port if both systems have one. Documents produced on an Apple II tend to be short so slow transfer rates don't matter.
 
Could you describe the modern system in detail? Very recent hardware might have problems reading the disk Softcard CP/M produces. I think the easiest connection method is over a serial port if both systems have one. Documents produced on an Apple II tend to be short so slow transfer rates don't matter.

It's a Windows 10 Lenovo Core i3 with 4GB RAM.
 
It's a Windows 10 Lenovo Core i3 with 4GB RAM.

That means real 5.25" drives are unlikely to work with it. I see two options

1) Remove the USB stick or SD card from the floppy emulator and insert it in the Lenovo. Cider Press would let you manipulate the Apple II disk images and extract the word processing document and insert a replacement should you make changes on the Lenovo. A different tool would be needed to handle CP/M disk images. I am not sure what tools would work.
http://a2ciderpress.com/index.htm

2) Try a USB to Serial adapter cable and hook up a connection that way. Someone with more experience in that could provide much better guidance than me.
 
Putting floppies from an Apple II into a PC almost never works, even if it's from CP/M. (There are exceptions, but they're rare, and they're only gonna happen with ISA slots, or if you've got a SuperDrive on the Apple II (but then CP/M won't support that, AFAIK).

AFAIK, Apple Writer II's internal format is fairly simple to treat as just a text file. Use CiderPress to pull the files out of the disk image.
 
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