Question with opening files in emulated Mac OS 7.5.3

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themattman
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Question with opening files in emulated Mac OS 7.5.3

Post by themattman »

Hi everyone!

I work for my college's newspaper and we recently discovered some old floppies from 1992-2000 that contain backed up files of past issues. I am trying to open the files and convert them into .pdf, but I have had some trouble. I bought a copy of MacDrive in order to read some of the disks (some are double density and MacDrive does not recognize these, but I can worry about that later)

Most of the files I transferred either have no extension or a .pm4 extension. pm4 is used in Aldus (now Adobe) PageMaker 4 software, which is more than 15 years old. I looked around it it appears that you can open these files in Adobe PageMaker 7 Free Trial edition. I tried to open it in Windows 7, and there were errors. I checked forums and found the program does not work on Vista or 7. So I tried running it on virtual XP through Windows 7. The program opened, but it said when I tried to open the file that it couldn't do cross-platform and old-new version conversion at the same time. Currently there is no tool to convert pm4 files to anything newer (it does exist for 5.0+ though) So I decided to try opening the files on Mac OSX. Turns out that the program uses Rosetta, and I just upgraded to Lion. So I used a family member's laptop running snow leopard, and discover that the program only runs in classic mac osx, something dropped a few versions before that.

I then went to my Windows 7 PC and installed Basilisk II (with much help from this website's forums and tutorials (THANK YOU!)) And got Mac 7.5.3 running. I even found an old copy of Aldus PageMaker 4.2 and was able to successfully install it. I moved a few of the pm4 files over and a few of the ones with no file extension and tried to open them, but when I click the saved files it says it does not recognize the file extension. "The document "news 8-28-93.pm4" could not be opened, because the application program that created it could not be found. Could not find a translation extension with appropriate translators." When I tried to open it via PageMaker, it does not appear as an open-able file, and there is no option to just open any file.

I am feeling a bit stuck here. Is there a way to make 7.5.3 open a program with a certain file? Is there something I may be doing wrong that I could fix?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Have you tried dragging the files onto the application icon or tried to open them from within the application using the "Open" from the File menu?

If that does not work, have you made sure that the files were transferred intact from the disks into 7.5.3 in BasiliskII? Old Mac files without file name extensions will have at least type and creator metadata and possibly a resource fork. These specific Mac properties will be lost outside a HFS Mac file system which can make the files useless. How did you transfer the files?

In MacOSX it is easier to transfer the files because they will survive intact in MacOSX. You can run either BasiliskII (System 7.5.3 through MacOS 8.1) or SheepShaver (System 7.5.3 through MacOS 9.0.4) in Lion. To set up BasiliskII in Lion one needs to edit the prefs file manually because BasiliskIIGUI is PPC only and will not run, but SheepShaver has a built-in preference editor and will run fine in Lion (just not in full-screen mode).
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24bit
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Post by 24bit »

Hello,
sounds like a reasonable procedure, what you have tried so far.
Are you absolutely sure your files come from Pagemaker for Mac?
The filename you mentioned looks much like a DOS filename with its eight-dot-three characters.

I have Pgemaker 6.5 running in Windows Ultimate compatibility mode.
It may be the PM65 installer will not work with Windows7, but Pagemaker itself is working.
I am not sure whether PM4 was cross platform compatible, Office 4.2 was definetly not.

I would try to set up Windows2000 in Virtual Box on your OSX machine.
You should be able to open the old files with Pagemaker in the virtual machine, if they are DOS files.
As you already got PM4 for Mac, you might try to restore resource forks (in case they are Mac files).
Create a new PM4 file and copythe resource fork with MiniConversion or CreatorChanger to your file.

If you would like to upload your old files to Mediafire, I might try to create .pdf from it for you.

Best wishes!
themattman
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Post by themattman »

The actual file names are longer; I shortened them down because I thought that might be the issue in 7.5.3.

I have uploaded one of the files here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?d5jhbmr0qdq9tz3

If I can just get one of them to open, I am sure that I can get the rest of them, and it would appreciate it so much if I could find the right program.
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24bit
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Post by 24bit »

All right, I can open your file with PM65 in SheepShaver, MacOS 7.6, host sytem W7U.
For the pdf, some layouting and formatting has to be done of course.
Restore the resoure fork of your files, afterwards it should work for you.
Here is the quick and ugly PDF test I did: http://www.mediafire.com/?6v2w5puba5zw6w2
Silent Flamer
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Post by Silent Flamer »

What Ronald says is true . Almost all the time , even if you have the program , it won't simply associate the extension .
You should open the application and open the file from there (if it's not in the file list , it's not compatible) . But if you installed your System 7.5.5 completely with all features , you can also drag the file right into the application .
themattman
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Post by themattman »

24bit wrote:All right, I can open your file with PM65 in SheepShaver, MacOS 7.6, host sytem W7U.
For the pdf, some layouting and formatting has to be done of course.
Restore the resoure fork of your files, afterwards it should work for you.
Here is the quick and ugly PDF test I did: http://www.mediafire.com/?6v2w5puba5zw6w2
Would you happen to know where I could find a copy of PageMaker 6.5? I'm not sure if you can answer because a lot of this software is still copyrighted even though it is not sold any more, but I have not been able to find it on any mac abandonware site.

Also, is there a guide on how to restore resource forks on files?

Thanks!
Silent Flamer
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Post by Silent Flamer »

Well , StuffIt has been known quite well to keep the resource forks perfectly while transfering between operating systems .
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