Files lost on WordPerfect 5.1, DrawPerfect 1.1 and Norton Commander?
Posted: September 26, 2007 Filed under: preservation 3 Comments »Holland’s National Archives and National Library have announced the launch of an important tool which could save several old computer files from a digital grave.
The Koninklijke Bibliotheek – national library of the Netherlands – and the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands are proud to present the world’s first emulator designed for digital preservation: Dioscuri.
Dioscuri is capable of emulating an Intel 8086-based computer platform with support for VGA-graphics, screen, keyboard, and storage devices like a virtual floppy drive and hard drive. With these components Dioscuri successfully runs 16-bit operating systems like MS-DOS and applications such as WordPerfect 5.1, DrawPerfect 1.1 and Norton Commander. Furthermore, it is capable of running many nostalgic DOS-games and a simple Linux kernel. And when you finally open your long-forgotten WP5.1-files you can extract the text from the emulated environment into your current working environment using a simple clipboard-feature.
Hopefully, this work can be built upon. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a national Computer Museum (whether this is virtual or physical) where people could send orphaned files to be rescued?
Those WordPerfect 5.1 files are still pretty far from the grave yet!
Users possessing legacy WordPerfect files (4.2, 5.1 and up) they also have the option of downloading a free trial of the latest version of WordPerfect Office.
WordPerfect Office X3 opens nearly all legacy WordPerfect files, as well most Microsoft Office files, including files as far back to Word for Windows 1.0. X3 also publishes to PDF, HTML and XML, providing a variety of open standards publishing options.
The multi-format support offered in WordPerfect Office X3 makes it useful tool for updating old or archived files and publishing to PDF for archival.
Corel also offers mass file conversion services for organizations seeking to convert WPD, Microsoft Office and other documents into any variety current formats or open standards. More information is available at http://corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1152796561743
Impressively quick response from Corel! Took them about two hours to respond to my blog post. I hope Corel get a good hearing from the Digital Preservation community in the UK and abroad – if they are that on the ball they deserve it
[...] Online posted about the open source emulator project Dioscuri back in late September. In the course of researching Thoughts on Digital Preservation, Validation and Community I learned [...]