Converting very old file formats to a more modern file format wot WPMacAPP on your Mac running 10 11

Converting very old file formats to a more modern file format wot WPMacAPP on your Mac running 10 11

I�ll cut to the chase here. If you use a current Mac with OS X 10.11.x and you want to convert a bunch of old Word 5.1a for Mac or WordPerfect 2.x for Mac files into a Word 97-2004 .doc file that Word 2016 can read, then you need to download WPMacApp from Edward Mendelson�s Website, wpdos.org.

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You go here to get to the page on WPDOS.org with the specific WordPerfect on Mac information. This site covers just about every instance of WordPerfect, Wordperfect for DOS in particular, on MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. So you could get lost. Just look at the top for links to the various pages on the site.�

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS MR. MENDELSON HAS POSTED ABOUT USING THIS APPLICATION WITH OS X. YOU HAVE TO MAKE TEMPORARY CHANGES TO THE SECURITY SETTINGS BEFORE IT WORKS.�

This page does not have a big obvious icon for you to click on to download this app. The link is the second item down on a bulleted list. It says in bold text Download the disk image file�(Warning: About 530 MB)

Mr. Mendelson� has included WordPerfect for Mac 1.05, WordPerfect for Mac 2.1, WordPerfect for Mac 3.5, and WordPerfect for Macintosh 3.5e,� and WordPerfect Works for Macintosh 1.2 and the Envoy app, which competed with Adobe Acrobat.

That covers it for WordPerfect for Mac apps. As for Word for Mac, he includes an installation of Word for Mac 5.1a. Look in the Applications folder on the WPMac HD volume.�

You�ll also find MacLink Plus 11, which can convert a wide range of documents and images that you may have on your system and didn�t know what to do with. Archaic WordStar files? MacLink Plus can convert it into Word 97-2004 format. Old images files in ZSoft .pcx format? Again, MacLink Plus can convert it into JPEG or PNG format or GIF format, which your Mac�s Preview app can read.�

Finally, can you install Appleworks 6 from your old iMac G3 CDs? Yes, you can.�

Just copy the installer app, about 27 mega bytes in size, over to your /Users/<Username>/Documents folder. From there, copy the installer over to the WPMac HD virtual hard drive icon in the upper right-hand corner of the window from the Unix virtual hard drive icon.

The Unix icon is really just a link to the folder on your Mac chosen by WPMacApp to serve as the conduit between your emulated old Mac and your physical new Mac.�

Appleworks 6 installed. WPMacAPP quit upon finishing installation. I restated. After rebuilding the desktop, all is fine. Using the already installed MacLink Plus 11, I can import and export in a wide variety of formats.�

That�s my brief introduction to reading very old file formats on your Mac through the use of WPMacApp. Go at it! And Donate to Mr. Mendelson if you use some of his work. He�ll appreciate it.�

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

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cRPG Running Diablo 1 on Windows 7

cRPG Running Diablo 1 on Windows 7

Theres a fair amount of scattered, occasionally-conflicting information about running Diablo 1 (the first Diablo game) under Windows 7. (If you found this post, youve probably already seen some of this info.) Here are my experiences.

Out of the Box:
Diablo 1 will install and run under Windows 7. However, the original unpatched version of the game stores multiplayer character files in the WINDOWS directory. This means you have to run the game as Administrator. (Running the game from the CD automatically prompts you to do this.) If you dont, you wont be able to create a new multiplayer character or see any of the multiplayer characters you created during previous sessions. (I havent messed with single player.)

Connecting to Battle.net results in a long pause with the message "Searching for the fastest Battle.net server...", which eventually times out after about 1 minute with a "Could not connect" error message.

It is also not possible to play multiplayer across a LAN using IPX because Windows 7 no longer supports IPX. I installed Windows XP Mode with Virtual PC. While this allows for IPX, it is not a solution because DirectX will not work under XP Mode. This means the game wont even start under virtual XP.

IPXWrapper:
Instead, I went back to Windows 7 and used IPXWrapper. You just need to copy the 3 provided .dll files into your Diablo directory to do this. (This code seems safe. I skimmed the source, which is well-formatted, and I didnt notice anything obviously strange. I havent had any strange new processes or network connections made since running it, either.)

I was trying to play Diablo between a Windows 7 and a Windows XP machine. Note that IPXWrapper is tunneling IPX over UDP, so you cant play using IPXWrapper with a machine that is natively running IPX. All the machines involved need to be using IPXWrapper. But using IPXWrapper is actually easier than installing and configuring IPX on Windows XP anyway, so this is not a hardship once you know about it.

Patching:
Having to run Diablo as Administrator annoyed me somewhat. I was also curious if I could get Battle.net to work. (It is no longer listed even on the Battle.net Classic site).

Installing the latest patch to 1.09 means Diablo will now save multiplayer characters in the diablo/ game directory. Thus, running as Administrator is no longer required. Also, I could now connect to a Battle.net server. (I did not bother actually creating an account and logging on, though.)

Bad/Broken Colors:
Patching breaks the color palette, though. This is obvious in the opening Blizzard animation and in the game itself (though the pre-game menus look fine). Some have reported luck with the Compatibility settings, but none of the combos I tried worked for me. (For example, setting the mode to Win98 or earlier meant the game couldnt find the CD-ROM anymore.)

The weird trick some have reported of opening the Windows Screen Resolution settings window and leaving it open in the background also did not fix this for me.

(2014-06 Update: The explorer-based fix below no longer works on my system. However, see Marys comment on this post about a simple registry fix from Blizzard that solves this problem.)

What did work was: start Diablo, Alt-Tab and open the system Task Manager, and kill explorer.exe. Then Alt-Tab back to a correctly-colored Diablo. (Weird, I know.) When youre done with the game, you can return to the task manager and File -> New Task (Run...) -> explorer.exe again to bring back your task bar, etc.

As reported elsewhere, you can automate all this with a simple batch file. Save the following into a file named diablo.bat in your Diablo game directory:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
diablo.exe
pause
start explorer.exe

You can now change your start menu shortcut to point to diablo.bat instead of diable.exe. You just have to hit any key in the console window after you quit Diablo bring back explorer. (Annoying side-effect: this closes any open Windows Explorer windows too.)

All told, unless you are running into some of the game bugs fixed by the patch or want Battle.net access, its probably easier to just set the original unpatched version to run with Administrator priviledges. Also, if you do patch, all games must be patched to the same level to play over IPX.

On a related sidenote, Diablo 2 runs fine for me out of the box under Windows 7.

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