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I am dealing with an old PowerMac 8600/200 running System 7.6.1. The user wants to retire this system and move to something new (a Windows PC). However, they have data on this system that they need to retain (business documents). The system is not connected to the internet or any network, and has been operating as a standalone unit for the last 20 years.

Is there any way to copy the user's files to a modern USB thumb drive or another way to get the files to Windows?

(Let's assume the documents are actually in a format that can be read by a Windows program, i.e. text, jpg, etc, so this question is not about file compatibility, but instead about copying the actual data to some type of media readable by the Windows machine. While this assumption may be invalid, I'm not looking for responses that say "even if you copied the files you couldn't open them".)

I found this and this, but the only other Mac I have is a Mac Mini running OS X.

UPDATE: I found this, which may be helpful. But where is the FTP client on System 7.6.1?

Thanks for any advice.

Ryan Griggs
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  • Pull the hard drive and put it in a usb enclosure, then connect that to a modern MAC PC with usb to copy the files you need to a thumb drive. – Moab Mar 15 '19 at 15:48
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    @Moab - it has a SCSI disk - finding a suitable enclosure may be hard. – lx07 Mar 15 '19 at 16:21
  • @RyanGriggs - this model came with internal zip drive I believe. Does it still work? – lx07 Mar 15 '19 at 16:26
  • @lx07 even if it did, I have no way to read it in the new pc. – Ryan Griggs Mar 15 '19 at 16:28
  • You'd have to buy a USB zip drive but they are quite cheap on ebay. Windows 10 will read them - not sure about macOS. – lx07 Mar 15 '19 at 16:57
  • As SCSI is kind of a USB ancestor, I thought about an adaptor - but seems they need OS8... https://www.macworld.com/article/2149163/how-to-recover-data-from-an-old-scsi-drive.html tbh, you may find more specific expertise at https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ – Tetsujin Mar 15 '19 at 18:31

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Other than using removable media (ZIP drive) or imaging the hard drive with a SCSI-USB adapter, your best bet would probably be to connect the machine to the network to transfer the files.

Happily the machine has an ethernet port on the back. Plug the machine into your network. From the Apple menu (top-left), open up the Control Panels. Open the TCP/IP control panel, set to Ethernet, use a DHCP server if applicable or manually configure IP settings.

Elsewhere on the subnet, start up an FTP server on the Windows machine.

To connect to the FTP server, you'll need an FTP client. Your best bet to get an FTP client onto the Mac might actually be the CD drive (if you don't have a client already—look for Fetch or Archy on the Mac). For example, use the Windows machine to download either the "Performa 6360 and 6400 Series Restore" (PERF6400CD_753.ZIP) or "Performa 5260/120 Restore" (PERF5260-120.ZIP) CD, available from the The Macintosh Garden. The CDs may be Toast images — just change the extension from 'toast' to 'iso' and burn to CD. Both of the CDs mentioned include the FTP client Fetch.

From there it should be fairly simple to transfer the documents between the machines. Open up Fetch on the Mac and connect to the Windows machine.

Summary: connect to ethernet, get an FTP client on the Mac via CD, transfer the files. Only extra hardware you might need would be a CD-R drive and disk.

D Schlachter
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