So I was going through a drawer today where I absentmindedly tossed a bunch of old Zip disks and CD-Rs containing backed up Word files, e-mail and such. I made some delightful and unexpected discoveries. Among other things, I discovered an ancient cache of writings from my college days, including my senior honors thesis on H.L. Mencken and a journal I kept for about three years.

Anyhow, I also have thousands upon thousands of pieces of e-mail saved. The problem is, the vast majority of it is old, old AOL. The kind of AOL files that would have worked just fine with, say, Mac OS 9.2 or thereabouts. The kind that would be supported in Mac Classic... if Classic were still supported, that is.

Now, I suppose I could look this up, but I was hoping one of my dozen or so regular readers might have an idea of how to recover this material. I expect some trouble. I fear some expense. The question is: How much?