Question Disk Application file type for Brother wp-1700mds word processor

Jun 6, 2019
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Hi guys, I'm new here. I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but here goes.

I just picked up a Brother wp-1700mds at goodwill. One of the "apps" on the home screen is called Disk Applications. In the manual, it says that brother sold different "packs" which you could load up to do things like play Tetris or use a calculator. I cannot find anywhere online any of these "packs" either for sale or for download and I am unsure of what file type it uses. Does anyone here know what file type the brother used to load applications and if there is a way to package some type of a program such as a .exe file into something that this brother could boot(and I could write to a floppy)? I appreciate your help greatly.

Thanks so much, TheScrlLkKey!

P.S. BTW the "packs" are floppys.
 

DMAN999

Honorable
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I only knew one person that owned a Brother Word Processor back in the early 90's.
From what I remember they used a proprietary file format and were Not compatible with anything but other Brother Word Processors.
Sadly even if you find some of those floopys on Ebay or where ever they probably wouldn't even work anymore due to the disks being 20 or more years old and are to degraded just from time.
They are Magnetic so they had a theoretical lifespan of 10-20 years but a more realistic lifespan of about 3 to 5 years.
 

irbrenda

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Dec 4, 2018
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Not true about floppys not working. I use them every single day in my business. I also have several external floppy drives which work great. I continue to purchase floppys, but yes, a few eventually refuse to read so I trash them. But for the most part, they work fine. I use them because my business needs to use old WordPerfect DOS 5.1 to create ASCIIs for court transcripts. Installation was via a load of floppys into Virtual PC 2007. Didn't make me happy. Dinosaur era but it works for me.
 
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Installation was via a load of floppys into Virtual PC 2007.
You don't need physical floppies and drive to do that. Use an app like WinImage, create (once) floppy images like Disk1.img, Disk2.img etc, then feed images to VPC. And I'm sure there's easier way to install DOS applications - either by dumping all files into single folder (Windows), or creating specially-named folders for each disk.
 

irbrenda

Reputable
Dec 4, 2018
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You don't need physical floppies and drive to do that. Use an app like WinImage, create (once) floppy images like Disk1.img, Disk2.img etc, then feed images to VPC. And I'm sure there's easier way to install DOS applications - either by dumping all files into single folder (Windows), or creating specially-named folders for each disk.
I know all about Winimage and the like. However, in my business, I actually did need the floppies, even though I could have used a WordPerfect DOS CD for installation. My court transcripts require the use of saving DOS files into ASCIIs on floppies only via Virtual PC 2007, for the court, attorneys & legal software we use. I installed a driver that allowed VPC to see the floppy drive due to our requirements. So in my case, it was necessary. Believe me, I wish the courthouse would get into the 21st century on Staten Island, but it seems they remain in the Dark Ages along with the stuffy attorneys who don't want transcripts in .pdf format. Don't know why but I have to create an ASCII instead to create minuscripts! No offense to any attorneys here. (I went to law school and my daughter is a lawyer) However, I became a court reporter in the dinosaur era myself and have moved up to the 21st century with my equipment!
 
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Not true about floppys not working. I use them every single day in my business. I also have several external floppy drives which work great. I continue to purchase floppys, but yes, a few eventually refuse to read so I trash them. But for the most part, they work fine. I use them because my business needs to use old WordPerfect DOS 5.1 to create ASCIIs for court transcripts. Installation was via a load of floppys into Virtual PC 2007. Didn't make me happy. Dinosaur era but it works for me.

Why do you need an old program to create text files? You can create plain text files using a modern program. Notepad does a pretty good job.
Using floppies this century is like Amazon doing deliveries using a horse and wagon. Does the court also still use people to read head bumps to show personality traits as evidence?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Hi guys, I'm new here. I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but here goes.

I just picked up a Brother wp-1700mds at goodwill. One of the "apps" on the home screen is called Disk Applications. In the manual, it says that brother sold different "packs" which you could load up to do things like play Tetris or use a calculator. I cannot find anywhere online any of these "packs" either for sale or for download and I am unsure of what file type it uses. Does anyone here know what file type the brother used to load applications and if there is a way to package some type of a program such as a .exe file into something that this brother could boot(and I could write to a floppy)? I appreciate your help greatly.

Thanks so much, TheScrlLkKey!

P.S. BTW the "packs" are floppys.
That was from an era where there were many, many "word processors". Typewriter looking things, but the new shiny electronic. A relatively inexpensive alternate to the emerging home PC market.
Many makes. Brother, Canon, Xerox...all 100% proprietary. I had a Canon thing.

There is no generalized ".exe" you could make. You'd have to track down whatever proprietary disks and/or file types that Brother used for this museum piece.
Here's the user manual for it:
https://www.brother-usa.com/-/media...nts/2018/04/20/06/49/pm_wp1700mds_en_4698.pdf

You might have luck on fleabay.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Br...Monitor-Electric-Typewriter-RARE/323829458371
 
Jun 6, 2019
3
0
10
That was from an era where there were many, many "word processors". Typewriter looking things, but the new shiny electronic. A relatively inexpensive alternate to the emerging home PC market.
Many makes. Brother, Canon, Xerox...all 100% proprietary. I had a Canon thing.

There is no generalized ".exe" you could make. You'd have to track down whatever proprietary disks and/or file types that Brother used for this museum piece.
Here's the user manual for it:
https://www.brother-usa.com/-/media...nts/2018/04/20/06/49/pm_wp1700mds_en_4698.pdf

You might have luck on fleabay.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Br...Monitor-Electric-Typewriter-RARE/323829458371

Thanks so much for finding the manual! I will keep looking for any trace of the floppies on ebay and the like.