philip@axis.UUCP (02/01/87)
First, a brief description of the problem:
I have a friend who has been translating documents for several years now,
using an Apple ][ e with an add-on Z80 CPM board running wordstar.
The company for whom she has been doing the translations have used an external
company to make the transfer form the Apple floppies to WANG floppies - with
a bit of fiddling of the control info embeded in the text to make it usable
with the WANG system.
The problem is that the company doing the floppy translation work have been
charging a fortune. The company for whom my friend has been working are no
longer prepared to pay for this service.
If she wants to continue to do this work, she has to find some other solution.
So far, the only solutions offered have been for her to buy a WANG PC
(they are not cheap) or to work by modem with the WANG system owned by
the company for whom she has been doing the translations. The 'phone
bills would be almost as much as she gets for the work !
I have looked at the control character translation bit - thats not too
difficult to implement on the Apple. The real problem is in producing
the WANG format floppies. I need some info on the following points:
What is the physical format of an APPLE ][ e floppy ?
What is the physical format of a WANG word processor floppy ?
What are the directory structures of these floppies like ?
Now the hard bit ...
The only machines available to make the translation of floppies on are
the Apple, and IBM PC and IBM PC/AT machines.
The PC runs PC-DOS, and the AT Xenix 5 (from SCO).
Does anyone know if it is physically possible to persuade the drive
on an IBM PC (or AT) to read the Apple discs ? If so, are there any special
tricks to know ?
I would appreciate any help anyone can give with these points.
Please reply by mail, and if I receive enough info to be of general
interest, I will post a resume article later.
Philip
email: {..}!mcvax!axis!philip or simply: philip@axis.uucp