I have recently acquired an Amiga A2000 (posted in the hardware board) and in part of owning the disks that the prior owner had I am tasked to pull the Textcraft Plus documents off of a library of disks that I have. They are the prior owners Sermons and writings from while he was a minister and I want to get the files to him. He is at the end of his life and is thinking of writing a book and I want to get these to him.

Is there a good way to do this? I have Textcraft 93 on disk, as well as 92 and the original disk that came with the machine, but I have yet to get a gotek. Would I be able to pull them straight from disk into something like Icaros and translate them all to a TXT format?

Hope to hear from someone soon. Thank you.

@dommer416

If Textcraft 93 is able to save to plain text format, I would copy all text files to HDD and then to PC. I would also make ADF copy of textcraft disk and use this on PC under emulation.

Note top priority is to copy text files from the disks to safe location (or better two: HDD of your Amiga and HDD of other PC). When you are done with this, we may look into the conversion thing.

@pavlor

Textcraft, prior to like 97 or 98, didn't have the alternate save files. Or at least it appears that way from the few things I have been able to find on it (I don't know where to look). I was thinking of trying to open the disks in Icaros Desktop and opening them with textcraft in there, or, getting a gotek and copying the files on to that and converting them that way. I just don't know what gotek to get.

The machine doesn't have a hard drive or any real expansion past just 9mb of ram and I only have 2 floppy drives.

@dommer416

Amiga Explorer could work even on such setup.

Icaros is x86, Textcraft 68k. I recommend to use WinUAE for this task. I never used TextCraft (seems to be really ancient - announced in 1985 among the very first software for Amiga!), but I will find some version and try export.

Edit: Got TextCraft Plus (1988). "Save as" supports ASCII. I think this part is solved now. However, if you have many documents, it may be convenient to find some authomatic conversion... will look into it.

Edit2: TextCraft seems not to like newer OS versions, it is not even able to use HDD...

Last edited by pavlor on 31-Aug-2017 at 05:08 PM.
Last edited by pavlor on 31-Aug-2017 at 04:50 PM.

@pavlor

Thank you very much. I have some things to work on over the weekend while dogsitting I think!

@dommer416

I agree that your first priority should be getting those files copied to a PC. If you have a PC that still has a floppy drive, I'd use something like CrossDOS on your A2000 to copy those files onto a PC floppy. Once the files are on your PC, you'll have a lot more options with emulation.

@mpiva

That'd be cool if I didn't just have 1.2 :P
Ugh, well if Aros falls through I guess I'll need a 3.1 kickstart anyways.

@dommer416

I think 1.2 will suffice for basic file operations. My tests show TextCraft will not work on 3.x anyway.

Using AmigaExplorer I mentioned could bypass floppy altogether. Just make ADFs from all your disks and then we can solve the rest (I could prepare working WinUAE enviroment and configuration for you).

@pavlor

No I can probably figure out the JanusUAE stuff for myself (I'm on linux and I'll be using AROS specifically for this).

I'm actually going to test a lot of different things, from floppy only all the way to explorer, and everything in between. I like to document processes like this and find every other way possible to make it all work. :3

@dommer416

That´s the spirit! Going the hard way.

@pavlor

I wanna learn not just do!

@dommer416

Quote:

dommer416 wrote: @pavlor Textcraft, prior to like 97 or 98, didn't have the alternate save files...

IMR you could print the text into a file ...

@OneTimer1

I could, however I don't have a dot matrix printer, nor do I have a compatible printer.

@dommer416


You're misunderstanding OneTimer1. He's telling you that Textcraft has the ability to print documents to an ASCII text file, not print them on paper. If no other means of export exists, this would be a great way to convert the documents.

@ferrels

I'm aware of that. I need a way to get the files off the disks, which I also know how to do.

@dommer416

Where in "Western Earth" are you? Maybe there's another Amigan nearby that has the equipment to get the files off the disks.

@dommer416 : a single nullmodem + amigaexplorer will do the job !

Otherwise you could something like plipbox to swap data between this A2000 and modern computer (in ethernet ;)

This A2000 used IDE or SCSI additionnal zorro cards ? We need more details to help you.

Last edited by bigdan on 03-Sep-2017 at 08:41 AM.
Last edited by bigdan on 03-Sep-2017 at 08:40 AM.
Last edited by bigdan on 03-Sep-2017 at 08:36 AM.

@dommer416

AmigaExplorer and a serial cable is your best bet.

@dommer416

I have created a little web page for you showing how I saved the documents in TEXT ONLY and then simply copied them to a PC floppy. I used Textcraft 1.0 but I can't believe the later versions didn't let you save in TEXT only. I had to use my Amiga 1000 because neither the A1200 or A500 would see the mouse pointer when the software was launched. Worked on the 1000 though.

May take a while to open each document and save to text only but the files are very small. Then it really is a case of adding the txt file extension if you wish and then using a drive with CrossDOS and copying to a basic PC floppy disk. You would be amazed at how many text files you can get onto a single floppy.

Shouldn't be a problem. The actual Textcraft files are not readable without the software.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_september17/scuzzblogdseptember17_1401.htm

This link shows how I did it today

scuzz

@scuzz

lol Well I have the problem of only having one amiga. I actually have the gotek here now and I'm trying to set it up which is.... Well, challenging to say the least.