Thank you, Cal.
I shall try that. Meanwhile, I have managed to find the R:Base (rather than rBase) discs and loaded it to C: via Command Prompt on Win2K.
R:Base can “Unload”, in their terminology, in CSV ASCII format. So, it will be possible to import the CSV files to MySQL and I am off and running.
Apart from the fact that it is a DOS-based system, R:Base may have the features I need to manipulate my data. Immediately, no one else will be working with the material so I may forego transfer to MySQL until such time as someone else, lacking R:Base, wants to monkey with it.