I have a ca. 1981 ATT PC which still runs Wordstar very nicely. Am trying to figure out how on EARTH to get some of the data off the hard drive and onto my regular computer. My sixteen-year-old daughter's baby journal is on there and it's precious. So are the early novels I wrote but never published, which are now suddenly in demand. If anyone has any suggestions short of retyping, please let me know!
If you have a local college, perhaps their ITS office could help out.
Go on Ebay and find a compatible printer. Then you can at least print them out and scan them into a newer format.
E-mail them to yourself on another machine as ASCII.
Easy. Depending upon the setup you have, there are several ways.
1. Copy floppy from old to new. You most likely have a Single-Side (SS) Single-Density, or Double Density (DD) Floppy Disc Drive (FDD). SS-SD is 180kb, SS-DD is 360kb DD-SD is 720kb and DD-HD is 1.2MB (all but DD-HD are correct or close, could be 3.5" ;) .) You need to buy a 5 1/4" (5.25") FDD off of eBay (or perhaps the local PC repair shop.) I don't recall if the interface is different, it's been a few years, but I think that a current ATX Legacy FDD controller/interface/cable will work with the old/new system -- YMMV.
2. The method I'd use. You need to use Hyperterm on your Windows PC and a terminal app on the ancient PC; connect them with a null modem cable and to a Xmodem/YmodemG or similar transfer protocol. Check the Hyperterm help files or Google a bit as I don't have time to give a null terminal HOW-TO. Of course, the hard part may be finding an old enough terminal app to use. If the old PC has a modem attached (and appropriate software) you are probably set.
You can hook up a modem or even just a serial link and transfer files.
Or, just take the disk drive out, put it in your "regular computer" and copy the files to your "regular" hard disk.
Does WordStar support a "print to file" format? If so you can print to a floppy.
Alternatively you rig a cable from the printer port on the old computer to the new so that the print command will send the data to the hard drive on your target computer.
Print out and scan with Textbridge or a similar program.
Your ATT probably has an RS232 Port. You can use a null-modem serial cable, connect it to your PC, and send your data over the cable. Use HyperTerminal on your PC, HyperTerminal is included with every version of Windows.
Hopefully, you have a terminal proggy on your ATT. Chances are at least fair that you do.
Possibly, WordStar can print to a serial printer. If that is the case, you can still print from your ATT through your serial port. The printed files, which will likely be in "clear text" or ASCII, can be received by HyperTerminal. Save the received data to your hard drive... or copy-and-paste in to Word or whatever.
Many ancient printers were RS-232... So there is a good chance that this would work.
The 9-pin serial port is as old as dirt, yet still in use today.
You want a 'null modem cable' and a "laplink" type program to transfer files between the two computers. I used this technique many years ago, but do not recall how to do it.
Rest assured, it can be done.
I am hoping you say you have a printer on the old machine. If so make a print-out and then if you have a scanner on your new machine scan it in, and your scanner most likelty has OCR recognition and you can save it as a text file or some other current readable filetype.