Re: Recovering AppleWorks WP files

[lorin.evans@tcs.wap.org (Lorin Evans)]

>My fourth grade does most of their work in AppleWorks and we
>sometimes can't load files saved on a data disk. I've tried the simple
>things such as reading the disk on another computer, copying the files
>to another disk with Copy // Plus, etc. to no avail. Is there anything
>else that can be done?
 
Michael,
 
This message is too broad for me to get a handle on your problem(s).  I can't
tell if you have one machine in the classroom and it happens to all students or
you have many set-ups and it happens on only some machines, etc.
 
   Let me try it this way:  You Apple II computers either have one or two disk
drives.  If you have one, you either save to the program disk (not a good idea)
or have the student remove the program disk and insert a data disk.  If you
have two drives, you 'should' have the program disk configured so that it is in
Drive 1 and the data disk in Drive 2.  
 
   You must tell Appleworks which set-up you have, or you can get into trouble.
 Even if you have two drives and don't tell AppleWorks, it won't know.  If you
have more than one set-up and some are one drive set-ups and others are two,
and you do not mark the program disks to indicate which coding they have [save
data to same drive as program disk or save data to second drive, etc], the
students can get into trouble.   Where you go to tell AppleWorks this varies
slightly from version to version.  
 
   You also need to have two good drives with speed ranges within Apple
tolerances.  It is possible although it does not happen very often that a disk
read on one machine can't be read on a different one.  Speed variations and
head alignments can affect those conditions.  
 
   Without knowing your set-up [configuration of machines, different students
groups, etc], you can either focus on AppleWorks or the hardware.  Down the
hardware road, make sure you have good working drives, whether one per machine
or two.  Make sure the drives can read/write from top to bottom, etc.  Use Copy
II+  and two blank disks.  Use the drive speed to verify the range across all
the drives in the classroom.   
 
   Going down the software road, if you have different configurations of
machines, than you should have program disks identified for those machines;
that one and two disk drive set-ups have properly configures software, etc.
 
   I can't tell from your message whether you kids are "really" saving to disk
[you can read their work via Copy II+] or you can't find anything.  More detail
here would help.
 
 
 
                                                Lorin Evans
                                                Washington Apple Pi
                                                 lorin.evans@tcs.wap.org