#Brother to Amiga
20 messages in this thread
Does anyone know of any way for the Amiga to read disks formatted on a
Brother word processor? A friend has a project that I need off of one of
the disks, and because it is 130 pages long, it's somewhat impractical to
retype it all.
The word processor uses standard 3.5" disks; I think the exact model
number is the AX-75. Any ideas? Or, does any techie out there want to give
it a try?
Thanks in advance,
J.R.
Are those disks readable by some other computers you know about? For
instance, can they be read by an IBM? I know nothing at all of their
format, so it is hard to help you.
Does the Brother have a serial port through which you could send the files
over a null modem? Does it have the ability to send files?
Betty
Betty,
No, the Brother has no ability to transfer files via a serial port
of any kind. Its instruction manual states that it is incompatible with any
other kind of system, but I am going to try using Dos-2-Dos to see if it
can read the disk.
It's a puzzling situation, but it would seem to me that the disk
drive built into such a beast would be simple and cheap (the WP itself only
sells for $450 or so in most places); so I can't imagine it being anything
weird like a Macintosh drive with variable speed and such. Seems to me
(although I don't claim to be a technical wizard) that some sort of
software could be written to make the Amiga think its drive is that of the
Brother, provided a schematic or other info on the Brother's drive could be
had.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
J.R.
JR,
The problem isn't the drive electronics…the problem with trying
to read those disks is:
1. How many tracks
2. How many sides
3. How many sectors per track.
4. Method used to encode the data (MFM, RLL, GCR)
5. Is the text compressed
6. Are there control codes in the text
7. What does the sector header look like
8. What does a data sector look like
9. How are the files on the disk organized
10. Where is the sector map
Get the idea? It's not as simple as can the disk be read, there
are many variables involved, and to have any chance of success you've got
to know most of them, and take an educated guess at the others.
In particular, if you don't know how the Brother organizes it's
files, even if you could read the data….you'd have no way to put it
together. It'd be like several jigsaw puzzles all thrown together…and
you'd have to separate it by hand and rebuild it.
Don
Don,
Well, you certainly know more about it than I do! I wonder
how I can go about discovering the necessary information…
J.R.
JR,
Contact Brother…see if they are willing to move the text from
your disk onto either an MS-DOS disk or an Amiga disk.
Don
Don,
Not a bad suggestion, but until my friend decides to GO AMIGA, we
may be doing quite a bit of this…!
J.R.
Wild suggestion–maybe you have the wrong end of the stick? Is there some
way to capture the data as it goes into the printer? Like CMD for the
Amiga? That is, let the Brother print the files, but intercept them.
If not, maybe it is time for OCR–but there is none for the Amiga. Still,
if the Brother will print Courier, I believe you would have a good chance
of getting it scanned and recognized at a sevice bureau.
Yes, we are going to venture inside the Brother to see if there is some
connection going from WP to printer that we can intercept. Also, the
Brother is capable of using various fonts via available wheels, so I tthink
there would be no problem with OCR.
Thanks, J.R.
Don is right, J.R. If the document is less than thirty-five pages, or so,
it would probably be easier (even knowing most of the things on Don's list)
to simply re-type the document than to unravel and decode the information
on the Brother's disk.
It does sound like a marvelous excersize for a "nuts and bolts" disk
techie, though. I wish I were more qualified to help
–An Other Voice
Paul,
Yes, I agree with you as well. Unfortunately, the document is a
130-pg. screenplay broken into 4 or 5 different files; the writer wants to
upgrade to an Amiga computer, but can't just yet, so we were trying to find
anoother way to get his work into my computer to be printed on my LaserJet
IIP.
J.R.
JR:
Have you thought of perhaps printing out the files on the Brother unit, and
then taking them over to a copy center type place that can scan documents
(there are several down here in Ft laud) and usually save them as either PC
files, or Mac files (most of these places don't even know what an Amiga
IS!), and then use a transfer utility (Dos-2-Dos, or CrossDos, or MSH
available here) to get them to the Amiga disk? While this is a slow,
possibly costly, pain in the neck way to do it, it can be done. If you do
decide to go this route, find out from the place doing the scanning what
font their scanner does best, and if you happen to have that font for the
Brother, use it, or if it's no too expensive, perhaps you could buy the
type wheel for it.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Mike,
I have considered this; in fact, I have a friend in Delaware whose
mother has a Mac that can change scanned pages into ASCII, but after the
shipping and her time, it probably would just be easier to retype the
thing.
Hmmm…I was SURE there would be SOMEONE out there who has
attempted this experiment!!
J.R.
Have you thought of printing it out and taking it to a shop where it can be
OCR'd? (Optical Character Recognition)
I would think that if the typeface was standard that you would be able to
read 90%+ of the document accurately this way; beats retyping the entire
thing. –jp– (why reinvent the Brother dos?)
John,
Yes, thanks, that's under consideration.
Thanks.
J.R.
J.R. I've forgotten, now. Did you say there is *no* other way out of that
Brother than via the disk, or the internal typewriter? There's no DB9
connector, no parallel port, etc.?
I'm hoping to see a solution to your problem 'cause I've a friend who is
looking into dedicated wp's like your friend's Brother. I've not found a
system with a standard data storage system and I'm a bit scared to let her
(she's a grad school student) entrench herself in a system that provides no
escape, as it were.
Hope someone else has better ideas than I!
–An Other Voice
Paul,
Nope! No serial, no parallel, no NOTHING other than a standard 3.5"
disk drive and a built-in printer. I have tried loading the disk via
Dos-2-Dos under MS-DOS, but it refuses it. The Brother instruction manual
states that the disks use a proprietary formatting system which cannot (and
this is how it reads!) be read by "any other word processor, personal
computer", etc. I'm sure that anyone using one of these things would like
to someday get a REAL computer…it'd be nice to have some way of
transferring the files to another system format (even if it were MS-DOS).
So, let's rally together somebody out there who's gutsy enough to
investigate further! Any takers?
Thanks,
J.R.
J.R.:
Does the Brother have a parallel port? Or let me put it like this, can
the brother run an external printer or be run by an external computer? In
either case, the apprropriate electrical connections might be made to send
the data out to the 'printer' while actually reading it into the Amiga.
Additionally, if the internal electionics are stolen from a Brother
printer for a computer, the WP side of the box might be sending the
internal data to the printer side by way of an internal printer port.
Again, it might it possible to subvert that connection, if it exists, to
your own needs. Call Brother Inc., and ask for technical support, you
might get lucky!
————————————————————TL———-
J.R.,
I would think that anyone wanting to get at that data would have to know
something of the way it is stored on the disk. I believe that it is just
ASCII files you want, so if some way can be found to read the characters,
you can get them – but a driver would be necessary, and knowledge of the
disk format of the Brother would be necessary to write that driver.
Betty
Betty,
Yes, that's exactly what I am looking for…someone who may have
already attempted this very task. Now if I can just find them…
J.R.