very old Illustrator file

[Sbrem]

Hi everyone, I have a very old Illustrator file I need to open, I've tried Inkscape as was suggested, but it won't touch it, perhaps the version I downloaded is too new, as I wanted to be sure it would run on my Mac. I had an older machine running our old plotter which had a copy or Illustrator 8 on it that would still open these
old files, but that old machine, a Mac clone from Power Computing in the mid 90's, like Elvis, has left the building. I'll attach it here if anyone thinks they might be able to open it, then save it as a pdf or eps, thanks in advance.

Steve

[Homer]

I tried with a few programs, nothing. Invalid file format.....try yelling at it? Seems to help...

[royster13]

I tried.....No luck for me either....

[Sbrem]

We have the image on an old plastic based vellum we had with a printer whose brand I can't remember, so I guess we'll just scan it in and go from there. Thanks for trying folks. We all like a good challenge yes?

Steve

[Frog]

We have the image on an old plastic based vellum we had with a printer whose brand I can't remember, so I guess we'll just scan it in and go from there. Thanks for trying folks. We all like a good challenge yes?

Steve

Just this last Friday I just had to scan some old camera films I somehow still had for re-sized project with the same pre-computer image.

[Dottonedan]

I tried but could not.

[balloonguy]

I tried on an old computer with cs3. It dod not work...

[screenxpress]

Unless I did something really wrong, I don't think this is/was an AI file and I do not own a MAC

I extracted your .ai file and opened with Notepad++ which almost is like a raw file dump but often is useful to look under the covers.  I've attached 5 snaps from 'stuff' that caught my eye and nothing anywhere seemed to have any reference to Adobe or Illustrator.

I've also attached a pic of a real .ai file, at least on Windows on this post and the next (limit of 4 per post)

Hope this helps some.  Good luck.

[screenxpress]

Unless I did something really wrong, I don't think this is/was an AI file and I do not own a MAC

I extracted your .ai file and opened with Notepad++ which almost is like a raw file dump but often is useful to look under the covers.  I've attached 5 snaps from 'stuff' that caught my eye and nothing anywhere seemed to have any reference to Adobe or Illustrator.

I've also attached a pic of a real .ai file, at least on Windows on this post and the next (limit of 4 per post)

Good luck

[Sbrem]

I did have a fix from years ago, where I could open a file with a text editor, and if I remember correctly, I had some code that I could copy and paste into the header up to "bounding box". I do not know how to read or write code at all, but can copy and paste with the best of them. So, when I couldn't find "bounding box" I thought I'd try here to see what others might know. Thanks for digging in.

Steve

[screenxpress]

I did have a fix from years ago, where I could open a file with a text editor, and if I remember correctly, I had some code that I could copy and paste into the header up to "bounding box". I do not know how to read or write code at all, but can copy and paste with the best of them. So, when I couldn't find "bounding box" I thought I'd try here to see what others might know. Thanks for digging in.

Steve

Again, let me restate that I do NOT own a MAC so it is very possible my view of file contents could be completely different from what I would see on a MAC.

But continuing on from the Windows point of view.

Good news and bad news.  Notepad++ is open source (free) software available at https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/ and beats the pants off Notepad.  Tons more options on Searching, Bulk Changes, etc.  Use the "Open With" option on a right-click.

The good news: Supports copying and pasting with ease

The bad news: That file and many others often, but not always, contain either ASCII or EBCDIC code which is pretty much gobbledygook to us humans.

I suggest you download the Notepad++ so you have it in your bag of tricks even if not usable for this situation.  Many times I've seen posts of files that are "thought" to be from one software application but browsing in Notepad++ exposes a completely different origination.

Hopefully something was useful here

[broadway]

I have attached your pdf. I opened it up in CS2 (2005). Do not ask me why i have CS2 available. Let me know if it does not open.
Peter

[screenxpress]

Did you use CS2 on MAC or PC?

[broadway]

I used an iMac 5,1 with os 10.6.8.

[screenxpress]

Ah

That goes with what I originally said as to my past work experiences from above:

Again, let me restate that I do NOT own a MAC so it is very possible my view of file contents could be completely different from what I would see on a MAC.

You left me off the hook, thanks