After 20 Years, I'm This Close To Finally Escaping Data Rot - Thoughts?

[Dave Rawson <TheGuy@_Remove_This_Part_DRawson.Com>]

Hi!

I'm sort of a babe-in-the-woods here and need some kind help.

I have around 650 Apple-disk sides of correspondence from 1989 to 1993, 
but have been unable until now to attempt to get them over into a more 
preservable form.

I booted up my aging, failing Franklin Ace which had long ago replaced 
my Apple ][+.

The Franklin's power supply makes woozy pulsing sounds and a number of 
keys don't work and their number has grown over the last two days or so 
of trying to get Apple Disk Transfer (ADT) onto the Franklin's disk drives.

I have been able to boot into Acewriter and load and read the most 
ancient of my disks.  The Acewriter format appends an ".mw" to each file 
and I believe that stands for Magic Writer and I believe these are just 
glorified ASCII text files.

So I've demonstrated the potential viability of the old media and was 
finally able to get the two machines - Franklin and PC - to talk to each 
other.

This used an Apricorn serial interface in slot 3 with the connector 
mounted in the terminal position and connected through a standard DB-25 
to DB-9 cable to the PC.  The card is triggered with an "IN#3" and I 
used a trial version of HyperTerminal (which I thought was HyperTerm 
when I installed it) to set the mode parameters to match the Apricorn's 
required 8N2 (not 8N1) data format.  Additionally, I set character 
delays and line delays.  Eventually, it worked and I got both ADT and 
it's configuration program over to the Franklin.  After 20 years, a big YAY!

But in that interval, the only working of the three shift keys began to 
work intermittently, the "O" key gave out (no more "Catalog" or "Load"). 
 The "R" key ("PR#n" "Run" "BRun") didn't work at all.

Alas, the ship is sinking slightly faster than I can bail.

But I am so close and have come so far toward finally dealing with this 
mass of old data, that I am in need of advice.

I need a reliable used machine that can help me read and port these 650 
sides over to the PC world.  What should I look for?  Should I stick 
with a ][+ or is there a better, more useful later version that would 
work?

What considerations or approach should I take that maybe is less than 
self-evident?

Sorry for my ignorance, but I haven't touched this stuff in almost 20 years.


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