Please, anyone have clue?
Ramble...

Many years ago, before I retired, I transferred much of my old business
(Early years) data stored on 3.5 inch stiffies (Floppy disks in a hard
case) to CDs and Hardrives.

Unfortunately, I've been going through this ancient stuff looking for some specific things, long forgotten.

Obviously in the file sense, all the files are openable, and many fully openable in there assigned apps that still kind of work (Virtual
InterSheet for example) when given the appropriate RISC OS filetype.

InterWord as another example, though Impression Publisher with an
appropriate filter will Load InterWord files.

However, I found a few very early files, 1984 to 1986 that I can see in StrongED but have no apps to open them and was wondering if any folks here might have any clues from the header data what it might have been.

(Would have been created on a BBC-B).

No1:
[Load of stuff] ’


No2:
Second set of files from IIRC. a database app of some sort, and all files
have the following in the header, depending on the save out.

[Load of stuff] 70F2RN35 [Etc]
[Load of stuff] 70F2CY35 [Etc]

No biggy... but I did wonder. :-)

Thanks
Dave







--

Dave Triffid

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In article <5bc657115edave@triffid.co.uk>,
Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

Please, anyone have clue?
Ramble...

Many years ago, before I retired, I transferred much of my old business (Early years) data stored on 3.5 inch stiffies (Floppy disks in a hard
case) to CDs and Hardrives.

Unfortunately, I've been going through this ancient stuff looking for
some specific things, long forgotten.

Obviously in the file sense, all the files are openable, and many fully openable in there assigned apps that still kind of work (Virtual
InterSheet for example) when given the appropriate RISC OS filetype.

InterWord as another example, though Impression Publisher with an
appropriate filter will Load InterWord files.

However, I found a few very early files, 1984 to 1986 that I can see in StrongED but have no apps to open them and was wondering if any folks
here might have any clues from the header data what it might have been.

(Would have been created on a BBC-B).

Sorry needed to repost as some of the c&p hashes and [00]s below went
missing during the post process...
It should read...

No1:
[Load of stuff] ArchieFile [Load of stuff]...

No2:
Second set of files from IIRC. a database app of some sort, and all files have the following in the header, depending on the save out.

[Load of stuff] 70F2RN35 [Etc]
[Load of stuff] 70F2CY35 [Etc]

No biggy... but I did wonder. :-)

Thanks
Dave

--

Dave Triffid

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On 27/11/2024 11:36, Dave wrote:

However, I found a few very early files, 1984 to 1986 that I can see in StrongED but have no apps to open them and was wondering if any folks here might have any clues from the header data what it might have been.

Most BBC Micro programs didn't have recognisable file headers, and there
wasn't a lot of protection against loading something from a different
program (which usually caused a crash).

Many files were identifiable (at the time) by the load and exec
addresses, when I started writing my own Wimp for the BBC after seeing
an Archimedes prototype (DEEJsys in !GraphTask), I used this to identify
View and ViewSheet and some others, but I couldn't tell you the values
after all these years. Work on that stopped when I'd saved up for my
A310 and could then run the real Arthur. I still have some of the BBC
files on RISC OS but many have ended up ended up loosing the load/exec information when they had file stamps applied allowing them to be backed
up to network storage.

The first place to start is what type of files do you think they are
based on the names and where you stored them. Word processor documents, spreadsheets, databases, images? So clue would narrow down the options.

The second thing to do is to load them in to Zap or StrongEd and look
for any recognisable text strings embedded in the binary data. Zap's
byte mode is good for finding images, set the column width appropriately
and you can often see image appearing in the data.

The third thing would be to get the BBC Programs you are likely to have
had in a BBC B emulator along with the files, and see if anything
manages to load them.

---druck

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <vifkdq$1s77v$1@dont-email.me>,
druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

On 27/11/2024 11:36, Dave wrote:

However, I found a few very early files, 1984 to 1986 that I can see
in StrongED but have no apps to open them and was wondering if any
folks here might have any clues from the header data what it might
have been.

Most BBC Micro programs didn't have recognisable file headers, and there wasn't a lot of protection against loading something from a different
program (which usually caused a crash).

Many files were identifiable (at the time) by the load and exec
addresses, when I started writing my own Wimp for the BBC after seeing
an Archimedes prototype (DEEJsys in !GraphTask), I used this to identify
View and ViewSheet and some others, but I couldn't tell you the values
after all these years. Work on that stopped when I'd saved up for my
A310 and could then run the real Arthur. I still have some of the BBC
files on RISC OS but many have ended up ended up loosing the load/exec information when they had file stamps applied allowing them to be backed
up to network storage.

The first place to start is what type of files do you think they are
based on the names and where you stored them. Word processor documents, spreadsheets, databases, images? So clue would narrow down the options.

The second thing to do is to load them in to Zap or StrongEd and look
for any recognisable text strings embedded in the binary data. Zap's
byte mode is good for finding images, set the column width appropriately
and you can often see image appearing in the data.

The third thing would be to get the BBC Programs you are likely to have
had in a BBC B emulator along with the files, and see if anything
manages to load them.

---druck

Hi druck,
I'd done the things you noted above before posting my question, and I ascertained from memory (My brain) and from the file displayed in StrongED
that the files in question were from an early database.
I can also see some of data in kind of human readable form with
meaningless to me, bits between the fields. The formatting I guess.
I can't put a sample in here as Pluto won't accept it.

There's 48 files in that category. Two years worth and 40 years old so I
think I'll forget about them. :-)

Post 1986 files are all recoverable as they are Interword or Intersheet
files, and 1993 and on, all recoverable as they are Eureka sheet files,
and I still use Eureka now.

Thanks for your thoughts, appreciated.

Dave




--

Dave Triffid

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