Help unzipping old zip files

[popeyespappy]

The first 6 disks were the architectural drawings for a national park service building in Atlanta. There are 48 other floppies which appear to more drawings of the rest of the park. Their facilities people are going to be happy to see these if they can open them. I have AutoCAD 2014 on this laptop. I just looked and the oldest format I can save as is AutoCAD 12. The date on the floppy drawings would put them at version 11 or sooner so I don't know if that will work or not.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My go-to would be to sacrifice a chicken to the AutoCAD program.

[popeyespappy]

My go-to would be to sacrifice a chicken to the AutoCAD program.

That's unreliable voodoo shit. Around here we sacrifice project managers. You get more reliable results that way.

[onlinebiker]

I'm impressed...


I never met any of the guys who worked on the pyramids....






Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My go-to would be to sacrifice a chicken to the AutoCAD program.

That's unreliable voodoo shit. Around here we sacrifice project managers. You get more reliable results that way.

Never got any noticeable results from a manager.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Was it early ascii porn?

CAD files.

CAD porn. Even better.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

CAD files.

CAD porn. Even better.

Dat Catholic-Agnostic-Deist porn is pretty rough.

[Dr H]

This brings up an "interesting" problem that has plagued me at various times.

I've seen a lot of various backup systems, of greater or lesser sophistication, come and go over the years.  Cassette tapes; big floppy disks; small floppy disks; Travan tape; DAT; RAID; external HD; SSD; etc.  We exhort people to make regular backups, multiple backups, we automate backups, etc.  And sometimes they're life-savers.  Like if a power surge or leaky sprinkler system takes out the main server, and when you bring up the new server you can pull in the overnight backups and only have lost a few hours work, if that.

But every now and then you need to pull out a backup of that spreadsheet from 2002, or the stats table from 1998.  And you find that your current backup systems aren't compatible with your previous backup systems.  Different software; software incompatible with the OS; software incompatible with the hardware; wrong hardware; existing server won't run the old hardware; hardware doesn't exist anymore; etc., etc.

This past summer I had to recover some records that were backed up on 3-1/2" floppies.  Disks could not be removed from the premises; no computer or workstation in the place had a floppy drive.  So I bought a USB floppy drive, only to discover that these are notorious for not being able to read old floppies.  Say what?  It's not like I needed the thing to make NEW floppies, for crying out loud.  Went through four different brands of USB drive before I found one that would read the floppies.  

Turns out they were PKzip files, like the OP had.  Fortunately, I found an archived copy of PKzip on the server.  Unfortunately, the files had been archived with a password.  Fortunately, I found the password written on a floppy label in the bottom of the box of disks.  Eventually recovered the files, and now they are the proud owners of a drive that will cheerfully record NEW 3-1/2" floppies, but only has about a 3-in-5 hit rate for reading OLD floppies.

This was a relatively easy case, though.  I've has backups on DAT that couldn't be read by software currently being used to do backups on DAT, because it was made with an older version.  I've had tapes that couldn't be read in a current tape drive, because the format had been changed at some point.  I've had hard drive backups that couldn't be decrypted with the current version of the same software that had been used to make the backup, albeit several years earlier.

What  a PITA.  It seems to me that backup software/technology -- among all other software/technology -- should always be as backward-compatible as possible.  What's the point of spending time meticulously archiving information if ten years later when it's needed, no one can read it?



Now, if I can just find a good way to get that 16,000 line FORTRAN program off those punched cards, and onto my laptop . . .

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I transfer files to a new external HDD once a year. No space issues so no compression.

[ignoramus]

This brings up an "interesting" problem that has plagued me at various times.

I've seen a lot of various backup systems, of greater or lesser sophistication, come and go over the years.  Cassette tapes; big floppy disks; small floppy disks; Travan tape; DAT; RAID; external HD; SSD; etc.  We exhort people to make regular backups, multiple backups, we automate backups, etc.  And sometimes they're life-savers.  Like if a power surge or leaky sprinkler system takes out the main server, and when you bring up the new server you can pull in the overnight backups and only have lost a few hours work, if that.

But every now and then you need to pull out a backup of that spreadsheet from 2002, or the stats table from 1998.  And you find that your current backup systems aren't compatible with your previous backup systems.  Different software; software incompatible with the OS; software incompatible with the hardware; wrong hardware; existing server won't run the old hardware; hardware doesn't exist anymore; etc., etc.

This past summer I had to recover some records that were backed up on 3-1/2" floppies.  Disks could not be removed from the premises; no computer or workstation in the place had a floppy drive.  So I bought a USB floppy drive, only to discover that these are notorious for not being able to read old floppies.  Say what?  It's not like I needed the thing to make NEW floppies, for crying out loud.  Went through four different brands of USB drive before I found one that would read the floppies.  

Turns out they were PKzip files, like the OP had.  Fortunately, I found an archived copy of PKzip on the server.  Unfortunately, the files had been archived with a password.  Fortunately, I found the password written on a floppy label in the bottom of the box of disks.  Eventually recovered the files, and now they are the proud owners of a drive that will cheerfully record NEW 3-1/2" floppies, but only has about a 3-in-5 hit rate for reading OLD floppies.

This was a relatively easy case, though.  I've has backups on DAT that couldn't be read by software currently being used to do backups on DAT, because it was made with an older version.  I've had tapes that couldn't be read in a current tape drive, because the format had been changed at some point.  I've had hard drive backups that couldn't be decrypted with the current version of the same software that had been used to make the backup, albeit several years earlier.

What  a PITA.  It seems to me that backup software/technology -- among all other software/technology -- should always be as backward-compatible as possible.  What's the point of spending time meticulously archiving information if ten years later when it's needed, no one can read it?



Now, if I can just find a good way to get that 16,000 line FORTRAN program off those punched cards, and onto my laptop . . .

Back in the bad old days, I had a mate you used to work night shift for a newspaper.
Can't remember the name now, It used to have a lady on page 3 showing her boobies.
It also specialized on horse race results.
So there's this paper stream shooting out a million miles an hours with dots on it.
They're the racing results being delivered from interstate!
He then fed the streamer (tickertape) into another "thing" which uploaded the data onto a huge 1MB harddisk, the size of a car tyre!
And don't even talk to me about their greenscreen word processing systems.
He spent most of his time putting thin black tape around stories to get them ready for printing.
Everything was done in negative with giant chemically treated plates and such...
Weird and wonderful...