It is possible that my memory is a little fuzzy on these machines. As I say, it was about thirty years ago that I worked on them. What I DO remember is that they were not something that you used on a PC, they were dedicated word processing machines. I think that they were actually the second dedicated word processors introduced after the Wang, but again, I could be wrong.

Randal

However, the question was about IBM Displaywrite, which was a software word processing package that ran on a PC, and from the picture, it looks like 5 and 1/4 inch floppies were used to store the data.

So, whether or not the original PC exists, the hard part will be to get the data off the floppies and on some current storage medium. There were conversion devices made to convert from the 5 1/4 floppies to 3 1/2 floppies. Might find something like that on ebay, but don’t know what kind of port it plugs to in a PC. Once the data is accessible on a modern PC, your answer applies.
Jack

If you take a close look at the question, Charles stated that he had Display Write files “on floppy” and was looking for a way to convert them from the “floppies” to his hard drive. Yes, from that, I am guessing that his files are on floppy disc and not (apparently the only technology you’ve seen for Display Writers) Bernoulli discs, which were about ten inches on a side and about a half an inch thick if I remember correctly. Personally, I’ve seen Display Writers that use both of those formats, as well as tape drive. Man, I am really starting to sound like an old guy here – next thing I’ll probably be talking about vacuum tubes.

Thanks for the comment.

Randal