Re: Q: Bank Street Writer file format?

[Matthew Ghio <ghio@myriad.alias.net>]

bath0011@rz03.FH-Karlsruhe.DE (Thomas Baetzler) wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Maybe somebody could help me out: An acquaintance of mine has used
>her Apple for years to write her papers on. Some time ago, she
>managed to fry the machine because she plugged it directly in the
>AC outlet (220V) instead of the step-down transformer like she had
>to :-/ She can't get another machine locally, and has since started
>to work in the Campus PC pool at he University. Being a theology
>student, she didn't realize that changing systems would cut her off
>from her previous work. Since she needs it quite bad by now, I have
>offered her to copy the files over. I made image files from her disks
>and was able to copy individual files off it using AFID. 
>
>However, all that material is pretty useless right now, because she
>wrote her stuff in a word processor called "Bank Street Writer". :-(
>
>Could anybody tell me how those files are encoded? Or is there already
>a utility that will do it for me? Your help is very much appreciated!


It's been years since I have used Bank Street writer, so this is from
memory and may be slightly inaccurate.  When you boot the Bank Street
Writer program disk and hold down a certain key (I think it was escape)
it will bring up a set of utilities instead of starting the word
processor.  From the utilities menu there is an option that lets you
convert the files to ascii text.  It will save them as DOS 3.3 text
files, which you can then convert with your favorite transfer program.