[Discuss] Discuss Digest, Vol 6, Issue 3

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 11/02/2011 01:09 PM, Rich Braun wrote:
> Jerry asked:
>> One of the ladies in the office has an old Mac G3 Macbook ... I was
>> just wondering if there are any OpenSource or freeware standalone
>> wipe CDs et. al.
> A corollary of this question is:  if you have an old Mac, how can you get the
> data off it if the machine is kaput?  My partner has one in the basement and
> when I plugged it in recently (motivated by all the hoopla about Jobs), the
> monitor would not come on.  (It's got a funky connector so ... no other
> compatible monitors in the house.)
>
> This was a Quadra vintage 1994 and what I discovered is that its construction
> is the exact opposite of modern Apple gear.  Expecting to find a hermetically
> sealed enclosure (you know the type--can't even change a battery in these new
> things), what I found was a series of quick-release plastic snaps to hold
> everything together, from the RAM chips to the hard drive to the outer shell.
>
> The hard drive is a standard 50-pin SCSI.  The filesystem is hfs.  Assuming
> you have a SCSI adapter lying around, those things Just Plain Work on Linux so
> after I dd'ed the entire hard drive (160Mb doesn't take long!) I had the whole
> project complete in a matter of 15 minutes or so.  (The files were mostly
> created in an antique Mac version of MS Office so they have to be read by
> Word/PowerPoint '97... I couldn't extract them with open-source office
> software, alas.)
>
> So, Jerry, pop open the hood and dban the drive on a Linux box. ;-)
>
If it were mine, I would, but she is our housemother here in our Regus
Office :-)

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90