Converting Zip to CD, MAC to PC

I have to say I have always appreciated the wonderful help I get in this forum. I have a new conundrum...

When I was in college I had a macintosh. I didn't go on the internet, it was for home entertainment (games) and for word processing and that was about it. In college I used to amuse myself by writing stories.... lots of them. I printed them up and bound them in books. 25 books, 120 pages each, 2 columns, 6-point font. I roughly calculated that if I'd kept it at 12 point font it would have been approximately 6000 pages of written material.

Anyway, I archived the stuff on some Zip disks (state of the art at the time) and packed those away.

Time and circumstances have separated me from my bound copies, and I was opening an old box looking for those bound copies of my college stories, when lo-and-behold, I discover my old zip disks instead! WOW I say to myself. I would prefer to have them on disk anyway.... SO...

How do I take four old ZIP disks and convert the microsoft word (MAC) files on them into readable files put onto a CD that I can load onto my current PC?

Any suggestions? Are there places that will convert them? I'm not even sure they're still readable. But I sure don't want to give up on them without a "fight". Will my Word 2003 be able to read them?

Anyway, I would sure love some input onto this conundrum! (No, I don't have my old macintosh, nor do I have my old ZIP drive)

AND for those who are curious why I've been so scarce lately... I've gone BACK to college. Online college anyway. I've entered a M.S. Education degree program that sort of eats up my computer time (and my free time, and my TV time... hungry devil!)

I've decided (after a bit more research) that I'll just buy a zip drive and pray that the disks themselves will still be good, and I'll be able to convert them from ancient MAC Word format to PC format. I can only hope.

Found a zip drive on ebay for $14.

Be very careful. You probably formatted the disks for the Mac and not as hybrid (Mac/PC) disks. There may not have even been a hybrid option at the time. If they are Mac disks the PC will not read them and will want to format them (that is bad for your data). You need someone with a Mac to open them for you and save them to a hybrid CD. If nothing else, I can try it for you. I have access to Macs with Zip drives You may also contact your local Mac users group or a local college.

Interesting... I found someone with a PC and a ZIP drive, and asked him to burn the contents to CD for me. He said that one of the disks had information but that the other four were blank. Perhaps they were blank for the reason you suggested! I couldn't for the life of me understand why I would have had four blank disks since I purchased those while a college student ten years ago and they were quite expensive, I wouldn't have bought extras like that and left them blank.

If you could burn them to CD I could let you have the zip disks as compensation for your time and effort. I badly want the FILES on the disks, but I don't need the disks themselves once I have the files!

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