How to recover data from Bank Street Writer files

[hardwarehack3r <expedienttel@aol.com>]

Hi, I'm not a regular poster here (I do have a bunch of apple II stuff
but very little spare time to mess with it in), and originally I was
going to ask this as a question. But I managed to figure it out on my
own, so I figured I'd post a quick tutorial for people to find while
searching in years to come, since I couldn't find all the bits and
pieces I needed in any one place.

I'm sure there are easier ways to handle some of these steps. I'm
relatively inexperienced on the apple II and haven't used on regularly
since grade school, so I kind of used the brute force method. Feel
free to add any suggestions to the thread on how this could have been
accomplished easier.

Background:
I had a data disk with Bank Street Writer (referred to as BSW mostly
from here on) word processing files on it, from 15-20 years ago.
I also had a box of floppies from another source that included BSW,
but for some reason I couldn't see any of the files on the data disk.
Originally I was thinking I couldn't see them because they were
created with Bank Street Writer III, and I was going to post a message
looking for a disk image of BSW III.

Well it turns out that wasn't the issue. It was the formatting of the
disk (and some other stuff, see below.)

So if anybody comes across this while looking for info on how to
recover documents as text from BSW, here's how:

1. Acquire an apple II machine if you don't already have one.
Alternately you could find somebody else with a machine and send them
the disk to make you an image of, but do you really want to send
somebody the only copy of data that you don't have a way to make a
backup of first?

2. Download a copy of ADTpro from http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/ or
google it. Versions are available for a variety of operating systems.
If it won't open correctly (ie: no program window opens and the java
folder pops up instead), you probably don't have a version of java
installed that can be called from the command line. See the notes on
this at http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/install.html and download a
different JRE if necessary. This fixed the issue for me.

3. Make a null modem serial cable  for the machine in question. This
will depend on the machine you're using, since IIc, and IIgs use
different serial connectors from other II machines. Info on making the
various cables can also be found at the adtpro website. In my case I
used a IIc, which uses a 5-pin din connector. Radio Shack used to sell
these, but no longer carries the bare connectors. They do, however,
sell MIDI cables, so I bought a 3 pak of those and chopped one end off
of one. (since the cable is molded at both ends, you can't get at the
apple end to connect the handshaking pins, so I tied pin 1 and pin 5
together at the far end so they'd loop back toward the apple side
(without being attached to anything on the PC end!) It may work ok
with just TX, RX, and GND and not tying together any of the
handshaking lines, but I decided to make the full null-modem cable as
specified on the website to avoid that being a variable.

5. Boot ADTpro on the Apple via the serial connection. (or other
method) Most likely you'll need to boot from "bare metal" as they say
on the site, since you don't already have an ADTpro floppy. If you
have a spare or blank DSDD floppy disk, make yourself an ADTpro boot
floppy and then boot the machine from that.

6. Put your BSW data disk in the apple II and follow ADTpro's
instructions to send a disk image of it up to your desktop PC or Mac.
You now have a disk image that can be used in an emulator.

7. Get a BSW disk image from one of the archive sites on the net. A
search for "Bank Street Writer" and .DSK should bring up something you
can use. You want the program disk, not the data disk or dictionary
disk, or bank street speller or anything like that.
(Please, nobody lecture me on the copyright issues of downloading disk
images, A. I have 4 copies of the original media, 3 of which no longer
boot correctly, B. It's easier to download a cracked disk image than
go trying to copy a protected disk myself or rely on an original that
might have bad sectors,  and C. I don't care.)

8. Download an apple II emulator. I used AppleWin from http://applewin.berlios.de/
(there's an option setting in one of the menus related to printing
that deals with encoding conversion for use with the european apple II
clones. I turned this off, but I'm not sure if it matters)

9. Boot the BSW disk image in the emulator to make sure everything's
working.
Boot a ProDOS disk image and do a catalog command with the BSW data
disk in the drive to make sure it's still readable and has files on
it. It's important to know what should actually be on the disk before
you try to open in within BSW.

10. Now for the somewhat tricky part. You need to establish what
format your data disk is in. Depending on the vintage of BSW it was
created with, it could be DOS 3.3 or it could be ProDOS format. This
is what drove me nuts for a while until I figured it out (having not
touched an apple II in years and not realizing what was going on right
away.)
Note that the BSW version I was able to find was an older version that
was DOS 3.3 based, rather than ProDOS based BSW III.
To open files in BSW, hit escape, tab over to the transfer menu, and
select "retrieve file".
If you can see the files in a directory listing but BSW can't see
anything on the disk, 1 of 2 things are going on.
A. Your data disk is ProDOS and your BSW is DOS 3.3 based and doesn't
know how to handle the disk format.
or
B. All your filenames on the BSW data disk are longer than 8
characters, and the older BSW version can't see anything longer than 8
characters.
If you can find a copy or image of the "apple II system utilities"
disk and boot it, that has a feature that will identify and catalog
disks (gives a directory listing and tells you if it's ProDOS or DOS
3.3 format) Insert the data disk and see what format it is. I had a
copy of this lying around so I used it.

11. If you want the DOS 3.3 based BSW to see the files you need to
move them to a DOS 3.3 volume (or image). (It may be possible to move
the files from the BSW program disk image to a ProDOS formatted disk
(or image), but I'm not sure what if any issues there could be trying
to do this.
Before copying the files over, first you need an image of a blank disk
(there may be a way to make a blank DOS 3.3 disk image from within the
emulator, but I don't yet know how. This would certainly be the
easiest way). I did it by formatting a blank disk on the real IIc
machine and then sending it up to the PC with ADTpro. Taking a DOS 3.3
disk image and just delete all the files from it might work too.
To copy the files over, I used the copy feature in the system
utilities disk, which I made an image from and used in the emulator.
Subdirectories will not copy, it seems DOS 3.3 can't handle them. I
didn't have any files in subdirectories, but if I did, I would have
moved them into the main directory and then copied them over.

12. Once the files are moved to a DOS 3.3 volume image, you need to
truncate (shorten) any file names that are longer than 8 characters,
or BSW won't see them. I used the rename feature in the system
utilities disk to do this. You can save a directory listing of the
original filenames using the identify/catalog feature in system
utilities, with output to the printer instead of the display. In
AppleWin, this will put the directory listing in a text file called
"printer"

13. Now that all the files are in a DOS 3.3 formatted volume and are 8
characters or less, boot the BSW disk image. hit escape and tab to the
transfer menu, select retrieve file, and hit return when it asks if
you want to see a catalog of the files on the disk. It should now be
able to see all the data files. Enter the first file and hit return.
Enter the file password and hit return (just hit return if there isn't
one). The file should open in the BSW's editor window. If there is a
file password and you don't know it, I believe there's a way around
this, although I didn't test it out. If you boot the BSW disk (or
image) and hit escape while it's booting (when the logo screen comes
up) it will drop into a utility menu, where one of the options is to
view passwords. I would guess that allows you (or the classroom
teacher originally probably) to view the passwords on a file so they
can be entered and reset.

14. Ok, now you should have a file open and be able to read the text.
Now you want to print it out. On a normal machine, this would go to
the printer, in the AppleWin emulator, it will go to the "printer"
text file. use escape and tab to select "print", hit return a few
times and it should print. Now look in the "printer" file in the
AppleWin program directory and your text should be in there. Rename
"printer" to whatever the file was called on the apple II disk
originally, and move on to the next one. AppleWin will generate a new
"printer" file each time you print. Repeat as needed.

Hope this helps somebody out.