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Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem
An anonymous reader writes I have an old Compaq Contura Aero laptop from the nineties (20 Mhz, 12 Mb RAM, Windows 3.11, 16-bit, PCMCIA, COM, LPT, floppy) with 160 Mb drive that I would want to copy in full to a newer machine. The floppies are so unreliable — between Aero's PCMCIA floppy drive and USB floppy disk drive — that it is a total nightmare to try and do it; it just doesn't work. If that option is excluded, what else can I do? I have another old laptop with Windows XP (32-bit, PCMCIA, COM, LPT) that could be used; all other machines are too new and lack ports. Will be grateful for any ideas.
There used to be a program called Laplink that would transfer between machines over a cable. You could get special parallel "Laplink cables," but perhaps a null-modem serial cable would also work. (Light googling suggests you can use a 7-wire, null-modem serial cable.)
I see there is a laplink.com web site.
Wikipedia says, in MS-DOS 6.0 (and PC DOS 5.02) there was something like it included: INTERSVR and INTERLNK. But it looks harder to use.
durr.
I'm so glad I moved to http://soylentnews.org .
Get a ide controller and whatever adapter you may need and just plug the hd into your current workstation. Perhaps one of those usb -> ide deals would also be a easy answer. Why make it more complex then that?
If the new computer has a USB port, they make devices that connect to many different old drive connectors and turn the drive into an external USB drive.
Get both computers on local network and then use this: http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/
Com port, 2->3,3->2,5->5 and use Zmodem
You could get a cheap IDE/SATA to USB adapter and pull out the drive. The adapter would still be of use since it also has an SATA port. Who knows, you may run into another occasion where the IDE is needed as well.
pull the hard drive and get a USB adapter for it
LapLink over parallel.
Or a PCMCIA Ethernet card.
Or a PCMCIA Compact Flash reader.
So many ways ....
Pull the hard disk and USB connect it to the target machine ...
The USB thingies are like dirt cheap ...
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
http://www.frys.com/product/8129805
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=USI-2535SIU3
Plug the USB cable into your new or modern computer and away you go.
with 160 Mb drive that I would want to copy in full to a newer machine.
Pull the hard drive, and attach it to the new computer via a USB kit.
Something like:
http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-C...
I'm not endorsing that kit in particular. I've had mixed experience with the quality of these kits... you get what you pay for. But it'll get the job done.
There are USB to 44 pin ide adapters. I am guessing by the description it uses a 44pin ide drive. There are also ways to do that through esata and whatnot but I find USB works better for old drives as sometimes they timeout with retries and USB->IDE bridges are more forgiving for that.
If the laptop HDD isn't soldered in, and if you've got an IDE controller on your desktop, motherboard haul the drive out of the old laptop and plug it in to the desktop with a ribbon cable. Copy away!
direct cable connection to your XP laptop via COM or printer port
The drive should still be able to be read by modern systems. Get an IDE->USB adapter, or just put it into the Windows XP PC (which almost certainly uses IDE) and transfer the contents over ethernet.
Even a drive that old is probably still IDE and not some weird legacy encoding scheme. Find an IDE-to-USB adapter, rip out the drive, and mount the entire FAT16 volume natively in any modern OS.
-Jess
I'm assuming you don't care about the laptop too much. Remove the hard drive and get one if these. Problem solved. http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16812119245&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=6146953&SID=i6mvh7kyg00000ws00053
The first option would be a PCMCIA ethernet card. Since you have 3.11, if you install a PCMCIA nic that has windows 3.11 drivers, you can simply use windows file sharing to copy everything. There's plenty of old nics on ebay.
Second option is to use pkzip to zip up everything you want. Buy a null modem cable and transfer the zip files using x/y/zmodem. Windows 3.11 had a terminal program and the windows XP laptop will have hyper-terminal.
The second option is much slower, but null modems are easier to find than pcmcia network cards with windows 3.11 drivers.
Windows 3.11 machines were capable of SMB file sharing over a network. You should be able to use an old PCMCIA ethernet card and install the Microsoft TCP stack (it wasn't installed by default), then see other computers over a workgroup.
If that sounds too hard then serial transfer over null modem should be the easiest and I'm sure I did it many times myself back in the day. I cant remember what software I used to use, googling for Windows 3.11 serial file transfer shows lots of hits though.
You need an intermediary machine that can read the hard disk but which has a network card or a USB port. If I remember right you're on FAT16, so perhaps even Windows XP can read the filesystem, and at that point it's a quick operation to get the files off onto a more modern OS and out. So you're looking to hit the sweet spot between the most modern OS you can run that will still read the filesystem, and hardware that's old enough to have the right interface for the disk.
Assuming its an old style 44pin micro ide or whatever its called.
There are many IDE to USB doohickeys available that support SATA, 40pin and 44pin.
You could just get yourself one of these adaptors from Amazon then copy the files directly from one HD to another...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Simple way:
1. Open up old laptop. Run defrag program. Set it to show the entire blockmap for the old hard drive.
2. Turn on new laptop's webcam, set it to stream output to a text file. Focus webcam on the blockmap from the defrag program on old computer.
The webcam will read the contents of each block on the old laptop's HD and write it to the text file on the new laptop. Easy peasy.
Parallel line internet protocol. Get ahold of a floppy drive for your main PC and put a micro linux distro on it, including the module for the plip protocol. Then boot off the floppy. It'll take like 3 or 4 disks to hold the full kernel, but once you're there, you can rsync your drive to something else with a parallel port or a parallel port dongle.
Slashdot:
News for noobs and tech support for grannies.
I cannot believe this question is even being asked here.
If the drive is IDE, which I'm about 50% sure it is, you can use an IDE/SATA to USB adapter. These cost like $20 on newegg. You need the one with the smaller IDE interface, and it needs to have a power pass-through as the 44 pin connection carried the power too, unlike a full desktop drive.
The filesystem is FAT16? and should be readable in a new OS.
That laptop still has pretty decent specs. Instead of trying to get rid of it, you should install NetBSD and turn it into a webserver.
That's how I used to do it. Looks like they sell it for $10 or so now. Get a serial cable, hook up those COM ports, and you're set.
https://sewelldirect.com/fastLynx3.aspx
Check out ebay for an old Parallel port Zip Drive. That should move the whole thing is short notice.
Did a quick Google, and found this:
http://remember.the-aero.org/a...
2.5 inch to 3.5 inch ide adapter, plug into computer copy
Zip everything. Null modem serial cable, CKermit on both ends. Done.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The easiest thing to do here is getting a usb to ide adapter, connect the old hdd, start to copy and then go get some nice cup of tea. The hdd will be slow as funk so it might take a an hour or two, but it's not big deal, just dont be cheap and get the bloody adapter from a chinese no-name on ebay. Just in case, to be on the safe side, make sure the hdd is EXTERNALLY fed. If there is not enough juice from our shiny new laptop's usb port for this, it will burn your port. Just that, its not more complicated than that, good luck :)
Real men just bust out the hex editor and copy the files by hand, nibble by nibble, just like in the old days.
Posting AC because slashdot beta was also apparently copied from 20 year old BBS software binaries in a similar fashion.
http://www.amazon.com/USB-SATA...
and with a brand name like generic it must be good.
lose != loose
Null Modem serial cable and download a copy of Kermit. I recently had to do this to transfer software from Windows 7 to a PLC network card that for some reason was a 286 embedded PC running DOS. Worked fairly well.
Kermit For Windows
Kermit for DOS
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
PCMCIA CF card reader, plus fat formatted CF card, plus USB CF card reader.
Or about a thousand other ways.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
By using the LPT port and a special (but not too rare or expensive) cable, you can transfer at about 50Kb/s If you can at least copy/software from a diskette, you could try with Total Commander, which has a Win 3.1 version (1.5Mb), and which include that functionality, very easy to use.
The Laplink idea was copied by Microsoft. If it has one of the more recent versions of XP, you can use a serial link.
You did not say how recent the destination machine is. If it has a serial port and XP or 98, you can just use a null modem cable. If it's a newer machine, you will have to use a null modem cable AND a serial-to-usb cable or adapter on the newer end. Further, if you are on Windows 7 or later, you will have to install Virtual PC and then XP mode (both free from Microsoft), so you can run a virtual XP window.
Then start up serial networking and transfer your data. One machine is 'host' and the other is 'client'.
SUCK A FAT COCK
Yep.. once again, IDE-to-USB adapter: https://www.google.ca/?#q=ide+... Just check the images on Google to see if there is a connector that matches the connector on the back of the hard drive. I remember that in some older laptops they have used the plug-in converters which may look like a part of the disk, but you can actually pull them off to get to the actual IDE connector. BTW: Order the universal(IDE/SATA)-to-USB converter so you can use it for other purposes in the future. Good luck!
Easy way? What borcharc said. Just get an adapter like this one (http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/151451123963?lpid=82&chn=ps), pop the drive out, and you'll be good. If you'd like to have some fun, there's a few ways to do that too. I used to have to drag files off of my old ThinkPad 760c all the time. I had the 760 running Windows 95, though, which made things a little easier... For you, you can use INTERLNK with DOSBox on the XP machine (parallel or serial passthroughs for DOSBox can be set up with these DOSBox files- http://home.arcor.de/h-a-l-900.... You can find INTERLNK for use with DOSBox or your 3.1 machine if it's missing here- http://www.kime.net/directcc/d...)
There's another way I found, using RAS, that I never used because I found it to be a bit complicated. If you'd like to play around with network shares in Windows 3.1, you're in for a treat! This page can show you how. http://www.kime.net/directcc/d...
For any of this to work, you'll need either a serial or parallel cable. You'll also need a modicum of patience, which is something I do not possess. That's why my 760 is currently functioning as a stand for the monitor attached to my Y580. Happy trails!
Is a tool for using printer and paper to back up and a scanner to retrieve data. :)
You can get about half a meg per side so you'd only need a couple hundred sheets
I think the biggest issue you'll run into is finding something that will work for the DOS/Win 3.11 device.
See if you can rustle up a copy of Laplink with the LPT cables. It was designed for moving files in just this scenario; using the LPT cable was always a lot faster than serial, which topped out at 115kbps. Yes, that's kilobits per second, you young whippersnappers.
If you can't find laplink, find (or build) yourself a null modem cable. Hook it between the two systems' COM ports, and fire up a basic transfer program that supports batch transfers (look for ZMODEM support).
I had to do this recently for a really old computer, and the easiest and fastest method was to buy an IDE to USB adapter, pull the drive, connect it to the adapter, plug the USB side into a modern machine, and copy the files over.
A family member had been putting every photo he or anyone else in his immediate family had ever taken, onto this really ancient computer that was old when he bought his first digital camera. Kids, grandkids, vacations, irreplaceable stuff. He brought the computer to me when it failed, asking if I could pull the photos. I thought his data was gone, but interestingly, in this case it wasn't the hard drive that had failed, but something else in the machine. (I didn't care what...) I pulled the drive, connected it to my machine, pulled the photos, burned them to several DVDs, marked the old drive with a sharpie, and put it on my backup shelf "just in case". Recycled the computer. About two hours work end to end, including trying to figure out how to remove the drive with no documentation for the machine.
So, I wouldn't even bother trying to figure out some kind of historic file transfer protocol or how to handle ancient removable media. Assuming the drive interface doesn't predate IDE (also known as ATA or PATA), reading it directly is the way to go.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
why not 255.255.255.252 netmask? Do you like wasting addressing space rfc1918 is very expensive space..
Maybe for some reason you want to constrain yourself to contemporaneous tech. D-Link made parallel port Ethernet adapters meant for use with laptops. I have a DE-620 that I've successfully used with Windows 3.11 on my Compaq LTE 386.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Simple:
1) turn off PC;
2) open the computer;
3) remove the HD;
4) voilà! Data is out of the old PC. [qed]
Just kidding.
The basic problem is getting the data out of the old PC. The problem is not booting the old PC -- if you want that and the USB is 2.0, you might try an external CD-ROM reader (PLOP is great for that) or even a USB external HD. If the USB is 1.0 (most probably), I don't know if that would work, either because of the speed or even because your HD might be unreadable by Linux -- IIRC, Torvalds himself once referred to an old HD technology in these terms: "Let's kill this beast!" I hope your HD is not of that kind. 160 MB is too small, it might that old...
I'd suggest:
a) find a machine old enough to read the HD as slave (remember to set jumpers accordingly);
b) use a IDE to USB kit to read the HD on a modern PC (it's like inserting a pen drive, actually);
c) use FreeDOS (actually M$ DOS will do, if you have it);
d) your floppies are unreliable, but you can get to use a another floppy reader at a friendly technician.
WARNING: I've successfully rescued half a dozen PCs using this method, but I've also lost two perfectly good HDDs in two different brand new USB HDD enclosures. The drives were unrecoverable and just went "click click" when later mounted back in the original PCs. So in my experience, there is about a 25% chance of complete loss of data. If you ignore my warning and use an enclosure anyway, be sure to buy the most expensive drive enclosure you can find, and FFS make sure you, the PC, and the HDD enclosure are all properly grounded before you start opening the case to move the drive to the enclosure. Then pray you didn't get a defective USB HDD enclosure. Also, use a UPS (uninterruptible power supply).
In my opinion: If you care about the data on these drives, you should find a way to dd the hard drive's bits over the serial port to another machine, and then boot the old hard drive image in a virtual machine. Pay someone to do this if you can't figure it out yourself.
p.s. No matter what you do, you should disconnect these old PCs until you can plug them into UPS. It's a miracle that your power supplies/motherboards aren't already fried.
Is a DOS utility for file transfer over a null modem or LapLink parallel cable.
You've heard of zip the compression utility. This is not it.
And lo - it works. Slow (RS-232?) but can do wildcards and recursion, so if you can leave it alone for a few days straight it'll get it all.
I got it working between a DOS box and Win2k. WinXP was unhappy with it.
AC
Windows 3.11 supports networking. Find an old ISA NIC. Will have DOS drivers and work for this.
But like 80% of ask slashdots recently are questions that can be answered through only trivial amounts of Googling. What the hell is going on?
MS-DOS 6.0 and up have a built-in laplink program called INTERLINK (INTERLNK.EXE). This will require a parallel port on the destination computer.
You can look for some PCMCIA cards that might help. I have seen a PCMCIA SCSI card that could be connected to a JAZ drive (1GB ZIP DISK), but finding that hardware could be difficult.
Does your old laptop have an IRDA port? Almost nobody uses those anymore, but it might still be there....
Sabrent and others make USB-to-IDE adapters with power supplies to do the trick. This isn't rocket surgery and is quite easy. I can send you mine if you want it as I have no further need for it. Amazon has them for $14.99
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Converter-Activity-Support-EC-AHDD/dp/B00CPGYNV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425002303&sr=8-1&keywords=sabrent+usb+ide
There's a USB 3 version as well for $8.00 more, but would be silly as the old drive won't be that fast to make the extra expense worth it.
I should like to drive a fist through anyone who suggests pulling the drive, attaching adapters, etc.
Old hardware may work, but old hardware is delicate. The last thing you want to do is to pull and tug at it, subject it to different power/signal levels than it's used to, etc.
File copy or drive image over serial/parallel/IrDA. Use any robust error-detecting protocol.
I have an old Concurrent CP/M-86 machine. The discs are SCSI, which should be OK... except the disc format isn't anything Windows or Linux ever heard of. I must do something one day!
The serial link has already been proposed - and that'd be my first choice (three wires, coil the ends of each one around a small nail, insulate with tape and carefully slide over the appropriate pins of the serial ports for cheap, one-time serial cable).
My second choice would be to simply image the drive - from there you have two variations:-
I've had to do the same with several dozen boxes so I can keep supporting a chain of petrol stations that still use OS/2 and W3.1 to run all their inventory, training, wages, email, and accounting systems on old enterprise hardware. My first reaction was WTF, my second reaction was - holy crap, these guys made a smart decision years ago that still continues to work while saving them many thousands per install in hardware, software, training, and down-time. The customers only see the late POS and the cheap fuel prices. They've had various SOEs ready to roll-out as replacements since the early 90s - but so far they've proven correct in retaining what works.
Can you just run a FTP server on the new machine and FTP up the whole thing? http://www.k7tty.com/Utilities...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
If you ask this question, you presumably have no following specific equipment needed for such operations: 44 to 40 pin HDD adapter, PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapter and PCMCIA network card. It's quite strange that you own the book for 20 years and have no such equipment (I live in Russia and I have all three. I prefer a PCMCIA to CF adapter and a 32-GB CF card since it gives me 32 GB of additional removable storage. There are LOTS of them on E-Bay and since all they are passive there is no place for problems. Then you can use any CF reader to move your data anywhere). So the least common denominator is either LPT or COM. Warning! You may want to boot from PCMCIA CF since it's sometimes possible that Windows does not recognize more than 1 GB of CF. So you may want to make it bootable.
If you have a computer with both USB and LPT then make a Laplink LPT cable (2 DB-25M connectors and 11 wires), boot DOS from USB stick and use Laplink or Norton Commander Link to copy files to USB stick.
If you have a computer with both USB and COM (even the newest ones usually have one hidden on m/b) then make a null modem cable and copy files with the same Norton Commander Link via COM. It's a loooooooooong procedure but it at least works.
If you have no other computer with both USB and COM then the situation is more complicated. You will need to install somewhere any terminal host having a Z-modem capability, for instance, some Linux and rsz package (Have no idea about such host in Windows). Then use a USB to COM adapter and null-modem cable. Login to the host and use your preferred terminal program to do the work.
You can use Total Commander (for W3.11) and Total Commander 32bit via parallel port to transfer files.
heh, back in 2000 I had an old greyscale Compaq laptop like that without a floppy drive or CDROM or USB. I managed to get Debian bootstrapped on it through the serial port!
Used a DOS zmodem program to transfer a minimal linux rescue image to it and launched it with loadlin.exe . Then used that to re partition and resize the 120MB hdd with a 80MB partition for Debian. Then some how managed to loadlin the Debian installer image and convince it to install a few packages at a time from the little DOS partition. Once that was working nicely, I got lilo installed to the MBR, and finally got rid of DOS/Win3.11 .
I think I eventually got the PCMCIA NIC and X working as well, but it was only really decent at running emacs from the console. I wrote a few reports on it and graphed stuff in octave and ran stuff through latex to produce ps2pdfs to print on campus. It was actually fairly effective at preventing me from wasting too much time playing Quake :P
Slashdot has become a steaming pile of shit. I can't login via a Mobile device because there's a perpetual banner add over the login button. What a joke.
I'd make sure to use zip; as I recall unzip has an automatic check on the format of the input. So if you copy W to X and X to Y it might come out wreong, but if you zip W to X.zip and try to unzip X.zip onto anything, it will warn you if there was some loss of bits in the intermediate medium X.
A fall-back solution: e-mail the (zip) files to yourself. Of coures this assumes an internet connection on the old machine, but even an old dial-up modem can be used. This is how I get pictures off from my (new) Android phone. If you've got an RS-232 socket on the old machine you can hook both machines to a LAN router and transfer the files faster. Again, though, in call cases, use zip to provide confirmation of contants.
http://www.jave.de/aero/44to40...
http://www.zenspider.com/~pwil...
http://repair4laptop.org/disas...
Did you try superuser.com and the like? Or is slashdot becoming a stackexchange clone?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
A minimal TCP/IP stack that runs on any system right down to 8088's, and includes an FTP client.
All that's required is a compatible ethernet adaptor (cheap eBay-sourced PCMCIA unit will suffice), and the packet driver.
Faster and more reliable than floppy drives, far more convenient than pulling apart the system and pissing about with adaptors.
5 seconds on Google verified this machine has no USB... tho it's age should make that obvious.
It uses a standard 2.5" notebook hard drive, with the standard 40 pin IDE interface.
If you don't want to pull the drive... Laplink cable is easiest.
Pulling the drive is still a good, easy option, attach to a cheap usb interface.
You also mentioned 16bit pcmcia... if we have a pc card NIC, access to Internet? The ftp xfer option is there too.
-Darkelf
Sure if you have a week, to copy 160MB in 1.44MB chunks swapping floppies around 100+ times.
Nifty
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I used to keep a PCMCIA network adapter lying around for this kind of thing in my nerd toolkit but it's 2015, this is some seriously old gear you're working with here.
I also no longer have laplink cables, either serial or parallel so I'm afraid the "pull the disk" suggestion is the best option.
You could use a USB to IDE adapter (if your board doesn't have IDE)
https://www.google.com.au/sear...
Many of those come with 44pin laptop plugs regardless.
If you're going to use your motherboard, you're going to want one of these suckers.
https://www.google.com.au/sear...
Luckily IDE has been around a hell of a long time and it's extremely unlikely it's older than IDE.
This is probably going to be the easiest solution for you, serial / parallel could be quite fun and interesting but who has goddamn time for it? Just pull the disk.
If for some reason you don't or can't remove the HDD, there are a variety of floppy adapters - as in, things that actually *plug in* to the floppy disk slot itself. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-... Is relatively inexpensive. It only lists compatibility there back to Windows 95, but the website ( http://www.olympusamerica.com/... ) has software for Windows 3.1. The main difference seems to be that you can only use memory cards up to 32 megabytes. Don't just buy that link I posted without researching, though; you may have to buy an older model for proper 3.1 compatibility. I can't find any evidence of this but I'm also CERTAIN that there are crazy specialty devices that are basically floppy disks with cables coming out of the back of them that you can plug into a floppy drive and use them as an adapter to some other kind of interface. I really wish someone else could help back me up on that, because I really think it exists but I can't find anything, anywhere!
PCMCIA:
Get yourself a PCMCIA Compact flash adapter. You can copy your data to the compact flash drive. (requires drivers, so this may fail for you)
You can also get a PCMCIA network card. Probably only 10mbit, but still more than enough. You have Windows 3.11, which was Windows For Workgroups. If TCP/IP wasn't installed on that version, you can download and install WinSock, an early TCP/IP socket stack for Windows. (requires drivers, so this may fail for you)
Serial:
You can do link between two computers and transfer over serial... but this requires the right software and the right drivers, so this may be out of the question for you.
Emergency Boot Floppy:
Use an emergency boot floppy and boot linux off of the network with a pcmcia network card. You can then mount the filesystem Read-only and copy over the network. (requires linux server, linux skills or someone who can do this for you)
Extract the hard drive directly: (best option)
Yank the hard drive. See what kind it is. Get the appropriate laptop drive adapter cable and relevant USB adapter. Plug that into a newer computer and transfer off the files.
Of the options, the hard disk pull and copy option is really the best way to go, bar none. The only thing you would need to buy would be the right USB-to-laptop hard drive adapter. You can find them on amazon/ebay/etc. If you live near Sunnyvale, California, you can even stop by Weird Stuff and they might have it for a song.
Winged Power Photography
I used Iomega Zip drives back in the 90s to transfer large files between computers and backup data before I had a network. They made a parallel port drive, internal PATA, SCSI and USB version I think.
If I remember correctly, the drivers were for DOS and had to be loaded before 3.1 was launched. It would be fun to try it again.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The serial port presents at least three possible solutions.
If you have or can install the TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.11 (which is available) you could establish a Point-To-Point Protocol connection.
You would need a Point-To-Point Protocol server on the destination machine and depending it's operating system, you may be able to do transfers through Windows shares.
You can also try to archive (ZIP, etc.) the files and transfer using serial communications terminal software such as Telix for DOS, Terminal (under Accessories menu) in Windows 3.11, Hyperterminal in later Windows versions. This requires serial communications terminal software with a common file transfer protocol at both ends.
You may need a null modem which is not difficult to craft from an existing RS-232 cable for the two above solutions.
The third solution requires a programmer who can evaluate checksums to write two programs. One on the source which essentially transmits the path name and contents for each file to the one on the destination which receives the path name and contents and writes them in a subdirectory or something.
-Easy Way:
Remove hard drive, use IDE->USB adapter, copied in about 10 mins using dd, on a partition by partition basis, 100% exact copy of data, down to timestamps.
-Hard Ways:
-Use PCMCIA ethernet card, if available, probably has ethernet suport for 10BaseT, optionally use twisted pair to AUI/BNC converters.
-Use COM Port on the machine, connect a modem. Use USB modem on new machine, limited to say 14400, would take about 22 hours, given best case conditions. Use z-modem for error correction and ability to resume transfers.
-Use COM port on machine, connect a serial "cross-over" cable. Use USB->Serial on newer machine. Make sure to use a cable that does "proper" voltage conversion. Use old ms-dos era program called laplink, or other such programs. Limit to say 19200 or at best 38400, taking roughly 22-12 hours for worst-case file by file copy. dosbox on newer machine could be used.
-Use LPT port on machine, connect to cross over LPT cable on USB->LPT adapter, use laplink or other such program. dosbox or other on newmachine should do, use again laplink or other such software. May not be 100% compatible with all USB->LPT adapters.
-use soundcard on old machine, encode data using On-Off Keying
-Use soundcard on old machine, encode data using FSK
-Use soundcard on old machine, encode each file using QAM-64/128/256 or other such modulation, transfer using audio cable to newer machine, imeplement error detection and correctionn, show your work.
-The drive should be IDE, I don't see it being ST506/ST412, ESDI, MFM/RLL, SCSI, or any other weird combination, not given those specs.
Remove the HD, plug it into a newer computer. Use disk2vhd to make an image of the disk, and mount that sucker with virtualbox.
Method 1:
Buy, borrow, or steal a 2.5 inch IDE hard drive enclosure with USB ports. Remove the hard drive from your old laptop. Plug it into the enclosure. Connect the USB cable to you current computer. It should mount the external drive with no fuss. Copy the contents of the external drive to an internal drive or to the cloud.
Method 2.
In a strip mall somewhere near you is a small shop with a sign in the window that says something like PC repairs or laptop repairs. Take the old machine to the shop. For a small quantity of money the shop will put your data on a CR-Rom or a cloud portal.
This method does not require screwdrivers or touching machinery.
Given that you did not think of method 1 in a few seconds, you probably ought to use method 2. It is far more bullet proof.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Did it all the time; going from memory...
I go for the dead simple, zip up all the files from the source
Run a phone wire between the computerers, with the terminal call one from one (IIRC you have to disable dialtone check use ATX3 then ATD555)
and on the other manual answer (ATA)
you migh have to do half duplex (local echo) on the terminals IIR this was the quickest route for no fuss local communication
once connected use the upload/download options on the terminals to start the file trnasfer
then look on it in a few hours, it will just churn away till it's finished.
It may be slow but it will complete as expected, and there is no special hardware, program or data cost.
look at the bottom of this article on my machine to machine notes -
http://www.portcommodore.com/d...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
You can buy CF card and CF card PCMCIA adapter for under $20.
Found this procedure: http://www.kime.net/directcc/d...
You could link the oldest one to the less old through their COM ports.
It may require access to Win 3.11 install disks tho.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
COM port file transfer, parallel port file transfer, PCMCIA storage, PCMCIA network
USB to IDE to get to the drive, or boot off an old linux root/boot floppy like Toms rootboot disk, and ftp, or whatever the files over to something else via the ethernet connection you didn't mention (maybe because it doesn't have one), or parallel you did mention (laplink). I'm sure many others have mentioned laplink for MSDOS.
Remember you don't have to be in the native OS or even the native hardware when all you really want is the files on the disk.
Another alternative, if there is an ethernet connection, is to go full knoppix - it isn't all that hard to run knoppix on one machine as a PXE server to boot up knoppix on a machine with no cdrom.
Just order one of these and hook the drive up to USB on the newer machine.
yeah by far the easiest is just take the harddisk and put it in a ide usb dongle(10$-30$ bucks).
second easiest is to get INTERNET on the machine. it's not that hard or impossible, then just ftp the files over. you need to find a isa network card though. ebay should have plenty of them. also this is the best way if you intend to play some old games or what have you with it.
third easiest, to get a null modem is also doable, the newer machine can use a usb serial dongle. if you don't find a null modem cable it's easy enough to make one from a serial cable. then use some program to transfer the files over that. it's just 20 megs so speed isn't a real problem.
then there's possibilities of using some crap like ooold zipdrives etc. possibly a cdr drive as well but eh good luck with burning on that machine..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Put a 64MB CF card in a CF to pcmcia adapter and Windows should see it has a hard disk.
Then stick that in a modern card reader and you should be home free
Yes, you'll have to look up your old friend Kermit (or Xmodem/Ymodem/Zmodem, or maybe even UUCP), and it'll have to run for a few days unless you can get it to sync up at higher speeds like 115200, but it's not information you really need much faster than that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, folks, not all PCMCIA is the same. The newer ones support Cardbus cards; the older ones don't, and this machine is absolutely an older one. I've got a Pentium-75 laptop that only takes the original-flavored cards.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Fastlynx:
https://sewelldirect.com/fastL...
Get a serial null modem cable. You can use a USB-serial converter on a modern PC if you want. USB-LPT converters will not work. They are only for printers. 2 way data transfer won't work at all. Sewell sells packages with Serial and LPT null modem cables with the software.
It can run anything from DOS to Windows 8 64 bit. There's a built in function to send the server program to a DOS machine over serial (using DOS MODE and CTTY commands), without using floppy or CD.
Run the server on the DOS machine, connect on a modern Windows machine, and you can copy the whole HDD over.
Sewell even has Windows versions of Interlnk. You can mount a 2GB FAT16 disk image on your modern PC, and have it show up as a drive on your antique machine.
Then dd it over the serial port.
Last time I had to backup a 80 MB hard disk, it was so ancient that no recent motherboard IDE controller/IDE to USB adapter was able to use it.
I used a old Pentium which allowed to set the hard disk's physical characteristics in the BIOS with a PCI USB card. I booted with a Debian Live CD and used dd to put the hard disk image on a USB thumbstick. It worked, with a transfert rate of 1 MB per minute.
I'm not sure if your hard disk is prehistoric enough to warrant that kind of solution though.
My Amiga 1200 from a similar ere definitely supported it. I put a compactflash to 2.5 IDE adaptor in and it now has a half GB SSD
PCMCIA card flash memory adapters are a simple solution. As other posters have indicated, pulling the drive and putting it on a USB-to-IDE adapter is the easy fix (assuming the laptop has an IDE drive (which some older ones do not), but if that's not an option and given that you say it has a PCMCIA slot (NOT to be confused with the identical size and shape Cardbus standard) you could just get a an adapter and insert a CF card or an SD card into the PCMCIA adapter and then insert that into the laptop. Once you've copied your files to the flash, it ought to be a no-brainer to move them to anything else (you DO have a USB adapter that accepts all sorts of flash memory cards don't you?)
NSA also suggests adapters that support MITM
Use a null modem cable to connect the COM ports between the old PC and a new PC. On the new PC, you might need a USB to RS232 adapter.
Get a copy of pkzip and zip each folder on your old PC. Install Procomm PLUS on your old PC. Run Procomm.
On the new PC, open your favorite terminal program (Tera Term, HyperTerm, etc.)
On old PC, send each file using XModem or ZModem in Procomm. On new PC, receive the file using the same protocol.
This was the way we got our files from dial-up BBSes in 80s and early 90s. The transfer through the cable is actually easier since you don't have to dial through a modem.
Cheers!
They were neat little machines. I was still using one in 2001, running Linux.
The easiest option is to use a null modem cable between the two PCs serial ports. For a file transfer app, I recommend Filelink which came with DR-DOS and therefore will be on the install disks for OpenDOS which you can download for free these days.
You only need it on one PC, it can bootstrap itself over the null modem cable.
The other option is to get a 2.5" IDE to USB adapter. You can get ones that do SATA too and will be useful in other situations in the future.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
http://www.toms.net/rb/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5890505/socat-tunnel-ip-through-tty
I assume the drive in that laptop is IDE, so get a USB to IDE adapter and connect the drive directly to a newer machine.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Hook your machine up to your modem.
Dial up to to America online.
Upload the files to a gopher.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
That's too easy. Back in my day, we used paper and pen to transfer our data.
I posted earlier, but I just made a blog post on this subject to explain how Interlnk works and to share the pain I went through trying to get some data off a 5 1/4" disk through my old PC......
http://charlescbeyer.com/ccb_wp/5-14-floppy-fun/
I have a Vantec USB2 universal disk adapter, it has connectors for IDE and SATA, with cables and power, for all the hard drives I've used since my last SCSI disk, this is the one I would use here. I picked mine up at Fry's many years ago, just as SATA disks had started to take over.
The alternative has also been mentioned, using a LapLink style cable: These packages usually came with selfloading sw where you just had to enter a single single MODE command on the console of the old machine, then the SW would copy over an ascii type bootstrap program which would load the rest.
I wrote a program to do this (the file transfer part) in the late eighties, in 1995 or so I also write a generic ascii executable generator using only those 70+ characters which the MIME mail standard specifies as transparent across all mail gateways and national encoding standards.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
I had the same hardware and problem years ago. I booted linux from floppy and used the slattach command to make the serial port appear as a netwotk interface. Then I used netcat to send raw disk image over network to a bit modern machine.
Compress everything you can, upload to the internet (free cloud service, ftp server, etc...), then download.
Write a little program in assembler and send the data out one of the LEDs with Morse code.
Seems like a lot of effort. I just get a serial cable and press my tongue against the TX pin. Then type "copy COM1:" on the source machine and open up Notepad on the target. By hovering my hand over the keyboard on the target the little electrical shocks from the serial port cause spasms that make my hand type the file out. It's slow and painful but some people like that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't understand why you'd need to buy an adapter at all.
Just put the disk in another computer. All desktop motherboards still have IDE.
IDEA 1 You can zip your files and send them as attachments by emails if your Antique has any access to email... Sometimes, with DSL connections they provide a dial-up access to the internet. You could get perhaps just about 44000kbps IDEA 2 If you are not in a hurry, you can always use LPT1 ports with a Direct Parallel/LPT1 cable since both have LPT1. You might get a rate of just about 300kbps... 7 minutes to transfer... Used to do it with Windows 2000 but not sure if XP still can do that. I also used to play Unreal Tournament on LPT1 ports back in the days. hehehe Good old Teenage years...
---- If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.
You can get one for like 5$. Attach the HDD directly to the new computer and copy files over.
I'm not sure if this is genius or insanity.
If that option is excluded, what else can I do?
Recycle it? It's not worth the power it's wasting.
Besides, if you haven't needed the data on it and transferred it/used it since then, other than the geek dick measuring aspects of it, why in God's name are you doing this? More importantly, why are you bothering us about it? The mid-90's, as far as laptops go, might as well be the dark ages.
That is all.
Seriously, pull the drive and get a new laptop. Use a USB drive adapter to read/copy the disk. (Have some in my tool set.) Get a modern machine. The lack of ports old hardware is adaptor, but there are adapters for everything. USB serial, parallel, and even pcmcia to the new card style. Granted it's Frankenstein looking and the pcocoa adapter means the card stick out a long way, but it works, and you get out of the old unrecoverable, unsupportable laptop mode. I've crossed the bridge and given up my physical ports and moved to adapters. It wasn't fun, but it works. After a year or so I'm not interested in going back.
and stick it in the destination machine. Easier than tracking down the cables to connect them directly.
SOLVED: I have run into this similar problem before, no floppy, no usb, no cd, no network, and have to transfer files live w/o power cycling.
1- Null modem cable or adapter if you have a DB9 cable already (its like a crossover cable but for serial connectors DB9)
2- Connect the cables
3- Use HyperTerminal in the windows 3.x machine to transfer the data to the new computer.
4- Zip up what you want on the old PC and compress it the best you can to save time in the transfer.
Notes: Don't bump the baud on the connection too high, as it will result in errors. it may take a little while to transfer it, but it will work 100%.
You best bet is to get the drive hooked up to a USB to IDE adapter and copy the files.
If that doesn't work get and USB to RS232 cable and a NULL Modem Adapter and connect your two machines. Ideally you should setup Linux with pppd on the new computer. Run Trumpet Winsock on your old laptop and do a manual login and just hit ESC as soon as the terminal window shows up. Once that works install and ftp daemon on one of the two machines and a ftp client on the other side. Then just copy your files.
If the system has a nic (unlikely) you could use ftp to transfer the files to a remote host. If it has a dialup modem, you could pick up a null modem cable and do the same thing point to point. Another option is using your com port with a crossover and hyperterminal - https://technet.microsoft.com/...
Precisely. I have like 3 or 4 USB to IDE PATA/SATA adapters, they are like $9. Just pop the drive from the old unit and plug it in, no case required. You could even do a disk2vhd and run the old machine in Win8.1 Hyper-V or virtual box, or some other virtualization solution. Some drives I have had to bend a pin out of the way, because it doesn't fit, but it still works.
1. Throw laptop into abandoned house.
2. call cops about 1337 H4x0r seeding latest Honey Boo Boo episode from that location.
3. claim laptop and backup 2 weeks later at your local police station!
Unless of course, you had an illegal copy of Leisure Suite Larry 3 in which case they will take you for all you got!
Many recent computers have a build in IR receiver. You can build an IR emitter for the old computer (the schematic here may be helpful http://www.lirc.org/parallel.h...). I guess it would be very slow :-
What about a USB CD-Writer? Just burn the content on CDs.
for $3 on ebay... and connect it to router
This looks nearly identical to the one I bundled with a HDD for a few bucks back in '09. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812816014 It has worked great for me on many occasions. As stated, it might have problems if the HDD is especially power-hungry (check its label for power stats), but I expect it will most likely solve your problem pretty quickly, easily, and cheaply. On top of that, it's a good tool to have around for a variety of tasks related to working on random hard drives.
CF cards are IDE, but with a smaller pin-out. If you have an adapter between the laptop IDE and the CF form factor you might be able to either plug the HD into a newer box with a CF adapter or plug a CF card directly into the laptop (assuming there's a second slot... or possibly even slaved on to a single cable if there isn't).
Personally I'd try PCMCIA ethernet because I still have a card or two in my basement, but who knows what crap you have.
Really, though, I just want to say thank you to the poster for a problem that Slashdotters really care about.
If any of you kiddies are interested in technology the NSA will have trouble getting at, I know of someone with a Contura laptop to sell you...
In the old days I used a LPT to LPT cable with a DOS app to move files. That works perfectly fine. You can also do it via COM ports connection with old modem based transfer software like Zmodem or Bimodem or HSLink. Just set the byte order and stop party bit.
Perhaps this FAQ may be helpful for future reference:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/laptops/compaq-aero/
If attaching the hard disk to a another PC doesn't work, you can always use serial/parallel communication to transfer the files. For this task you can use NC or Total Commander, both support transfering files thru a serial or parallel cable and are easy to use. You can use any of these programs to easily transfer between two PC's and are also small enough to fit on a floppy disk.
On the Total Commander site there is detailed information to build your own parallel port cable:
http://www.ghisler.com/efaqport.htm
I once wired up my own cable. It was 95% reliable. (A disaster.) I buy cables now.
Look at this fool, trying to use wires and disks. Just IR blast it! It's the future!
I used to have that very laptop. So first, let me say:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Okay, that's out of my system.
No, wait...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Okay, I'm done. Really.
I can speak from direct experience on this one. I installed Redhad 5.0 on a Compaq Contura Aero back in the day (after downloading the entire distro over a 14.4 modem) so I had to solve this problem. Here are the issues:
1. No CD-Rom drive. No internal drive, and no way to connect one externally.
2. No USB ports
3. No built-in ethernet port
4. Only a single 16-bit PCMCIA type II slot (meaning it won't take those double-height PCMCIA hard drives IBM made back in the day.)
5. You are dealing with Dos 6 (probably 6.2) and Windows 3.11, so you don't have a lot of built-in drivers and software for transferring files. Do you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11, or just Windows 3.11? It makes a difference. The 'for Workgroups' version has software for sharing files across a network. The regular version does not.
Options:
1. As other people have stated, your best option is probably an IDE 2.5" to USB adapter. Remove the drive, plug it into the adapter, and plug that into a modern USB-equipped computer. This will give you the fastest, most reliable way to transfer files.
2. If option 1 isn't an option, you could try to find a PCMCIA to compact flash adapter. You will then need to find and install the drivers so that DOS can mount such a drive. I might still have those drivers on a disk somewhere, but it also might depend on the flavor of the adapter. Seems like you had to load a PCMCIA driver, and then a mass-storage driver on top of that, and then possibly a TSR to actually enumerate and mount the drive. I can't remember anymore, but there is some complexity to overcome. Of course, to get the drivers on to the laptop in the first place, you will either need to transfer them via floppy, or get a dial-up internet account somewhere and download them over the internet. (Good luck with the second option -- if you even have a browser already installed, it is probably Netscape 3 or 4, or IE 3 or 4 which might not be able to load whatever page you need to go to in order to download the drivers. FTP might be an option, but then you have to already have an FTP client installed. If you don't, you run into a bigger problem than before, since an FTP client or a web browser is going to be bigger than a set of PCMCIA drivers, and now how to do you get THAT on to the laptop? Transferring the drivers via floppy is probably your best option. You can buy a USB floppy drive that will work on modern computers if none of your other computers have floppy drives anymore. If for some reason a floppy drive isn't an option, then you'll need a null modem cable (more on this later)
3. You could try to find a 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet adapter. (Try ebay.) Again, you'll run into the problem of how to get the drivers installed. Again, floppy is probably your best bet. This will probably only work if you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11. If you have the standard version, you won't have any built-in software for transferring files over a network. You could use FTP or something, but then you need to get the FTP software onto laptop in the first place. Again, you might be able to do this via floppy drive.
4. Get an old parallel-connection ZIP drive off of ebay. You'll again need to install the drivers via floppy.
5. Get a copy of laplink or interlink and a null modem serial cable. You will need to install the laplink/interlink software via floppy, and then you might need to buy and old computer that can still run DOS, since I don't know if you can get a copy of laplink or interlink that can still use a null modem cable on anything other than DOS. A Windows 95/98 machine should work though. I'm sure you could find something on craigslist for not much money. Transferring files over a null modem cable will be SLOW. VERY VERY SLOW. (This is how I had to install RedHat, so believe me, I KNOW.) So, if you ca
I do this sort of thing a lot.
I have found that a 160MB hard drive is probably too old to do the sort of autodetect that most USB-ATA adapters require. These were the days of entering the harddrive parameters in setup...
The best bet for this is to get a PCMCIA network card that has PXE boot capability. Or, a PCMCIA card with a supported Etherboot binary on a floppy disk.
Then boot into a diskless linux setup over the network, and transfer as needed. My oldest net boot image for this is Redhat 9. You might want an even older one, look at Redhat 5 or Slackware 3.3.
This would be most painless because you can just transfer the whole thing over nfs. No messing around with hard drive parameters or matching up new and old hardware. No dealing with windows and dos network drivers beyond just etherboot, which has always worked great for me.
Note that you can do wonders with the old Slackware 3.3 boot disks, boot.i and net.i, maybe pcmcia.i With a PCMCIA network card and the slackware floppies, you may be able to get to an NFS mount in only two or three floppies and no PXE boot. They're also super handy because they'll detect your hardware in that dinosaur and tell you what it is.
If you stay in DOS land you'll have to zip up everything and transfer it with a terminal program, which works but requires lots of space and takes forever.
Also getting networking to work on Windows 3.11 if it wasn't already set up long ago is a big pain and should be avoided.
Best not to mess with the hardware or installed software on it at all. PXE is your friend!!
=Rich
If I remember correcly, 3.11 was "for workgroup". And they sold you something "for workgroup" without NIC ?
Yes...floppies are a pain for moving data like this. The biggest problem I have is a more recent problem...1.44Mb 3.5" floppies seem to be mostly crap. Grab a few you have laying around and try doing a full format/verify on them...you'll probably end up tossing half of them in the trash can. Other older floppy formats seem fine...my theory is everyone rushing for the cheapest crap disks possible towards the end of the reign of the floppy disk...
Folks are talking about USB to IDE adapters...my experience with the one I bought and tried was that it wouldn't work with drives smaller than 2Gb, which wouldn't help here.
I'm not aware of (though there may be somewhere out there) any software that would easily work between these generations of hardware for parallel transfer. Serial of course would work too, but darn slow.
If you have a PCMCIA CompactFlash adapter and decent sized memory card, that might make for an easy move, assuming Windows 3.11 will see it without a fight.
Yes, a PCMCIA network adapter would work as well...but with a few hassles of drivers and network configuration, etc.
Got an old parallel port zip drive laying around?
The absolute easiest way, if you have a medium-old desktop, would be to pull the hard drive, get a cheap 3.5" to 2.5" IDE adapter (40 pin 3.5" to 44 pin 2.5") and hook it up temporarily as a secondary drive in the desktop machine...then copy your data off from that machine.
I would also suggest the Vintage Computer Forums at vintage-computer.com/vcforum - lots of knowledgeable folks there dealing with this sort of thing (and older).
Good luck!
umm FTP...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
First I will state that I interpreted two potential situations that you did not clarify. The first is regarding if your goal is to back up the hard drive contents or the contents from a series of floppy drives. If you are trying to back up an old PC hard drive, get an external docking station or enclosure, plug it in and set the jumper configuration to slave. Alternatively you might be able to find a cable harness to convert it from one form to another.
If you are trying to back up floppies and a USB floppy drive doesn't work and you need an internal one, try to back up the floppies onto the HD, piggy back the HD into another case as a slave (those old hd's used the ide formfactor and a jumper setting along with cable position to determine master or slave configurations), transfer then onto a flash drive or burn them to cd/DVD.
If you are wanting to copy the image on the disk itself, that is another story.
Or.... make the LPT_LPT cable and use INTERSVR / INTERLINK to copy. I know it is very very old fashioned, but works all the time...
See also:
http://www.easydos.com/intersvr.html
Just my two cents..
I have old machines like that. On my network via parallel port network adapters. This would be one of them: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/131436442143?lpid=82&chn=ps
Keeps my old IBM PC 110 on the network. Little guy has an uptime of more than two years now.
Boot your laptop with an old school linux or unix-like OS, mount an NFS share, then dd your disk to the share. Once you get it there, try to have it boot with VMware, Virtualbox, KVM or something like that.
I do this at work all the time, use to ide will not work.
You need a 2.5 ide to 3.5 ide adapter, these are a passive device, then you will have to plug it into a pc with a native ide ports.
I can't remember exactly why but a hdd under 1-2 gb will not work due to a limitation of the usb adapter and ide spec 1.0.
(1) pull the hard disk, plug it into a USB-to-IDE adapter. If the first adapter does not work, try another. If the HDD is in a proprietary caddy, unscrew it from the caddy.
(2) A PCMCIA flash card or PCMCIA to CF adapter with a CF card in the MB range. Copy files that way. (USB card readers are easy to find; USB PCMCIA cards are harder.)
Avoid PCMCIA ethernet; you will never find the drivers unless you have your original Windows 3.11 floppies and they happen to have the driver on them, which you don't, and they won't.
(3) You could easily by a PCIe to Serial and Parallel (or USB to Serial and Parallel) adapter, but LapLink is a nightmare. Avoid it.
(4) If You can not get floppies to work reliably, buy a new floppy drive and new floppy disks.
Please! Go to Amazon. $7.99 delivery by Monday. http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WPC54G-Wireless-G-Notebook-Adapter/dp/B00007KDVK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425143716&sr=8-1&keywords=PCMCIA+Network+Card
Unless it's one of those 3 &1/2" harddrives there's plenty of older ATA enclosures you can drop the harddrive into..
Like you don't have broadband connectivity?
But why not Dropbox or Google Drive? Send it up from the laptop, bring it back on the new machine.
160mb is practically the size of some web pages now.
http://www.briggsoft.com/fmdos... File Maven (DOS) is an free DOS freeware file manager with high speed PC-to-PC file transfers via serial or parallel cable. The user interface features a dual directory display with pull-down menus, mouse support, hot keys, 50-line video support, and a choice of 10 pre-defined color schemes. Similar to LapLink.
And if FTP is too ordinary for you, or you only have 7 bits available in your cable, there's always Kermit.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Put it in an enclosure and should be able to copy the files
Using VMWARE or others, providing one sorted out the small matter of mounting an IDE drive. I have many old PCs archived as flat files and backed up. The advantage is that the complete OS and programmes are there and can be booted from an PC or portable. Getting Data off is much easier once a virtual working system. VMWARE had a conversion programme for old OS.
Gerry
For the other graybeards out there, I have a Compaq SLT/286 "laptop" that I'd like to recover the files from the hard drive, a 40MB Conner Peripherals drive with what appears to be an early version of the IDE interface. The drive appears to work, and when I connect it to a Dell PC running Windows XP, it's recognized. But here's the kicker: I had partitioned it into two partitions (system and data), and the data partition was compressed with (as I recall) the disk compression driver included with DR-DOS 5. Is there any hope of retrieving the files on the data partition? I have the DR-DOS install floppies if that helps. I've considered trying to install DR-DOS on a virtual machine but don't really know how to make that work.
Oldie but Goldie Amigas 600 and 1200 are equipped with 16bit PCMCIA port. Very often used technique is using CF card in connection with CFCard reader like those: http://m.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html...
It's an IDE drive. See http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-ha... An IDE to USB adaptor would be best. Make sure you have a way to power the drive as some adaptors don't provide power.
CF cards are still common and cheap, adapters are too. Plug it into the Aero (I had one until a couple years ago, probably still have the hard drive from it) and copy away.
PCMCIA Ethernet would likely cost a little more.
if you have to, use WinFTP to barf over your filesystem to a new folder on your updated machine. then pick and choose, or just dump it all into a flash drive.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
adapter: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ActionTec-Compex-ReadyLink-PCMCIA-Ethernet-LAN-PC-Card-PE-200-/381053077537?_trksid=p2054897.l4275
cable: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Actiontec-PE200-MAU-Combo-PCMCIA-Ethernet-LAN-Dongle-Cable/380483898682?_trksid=p2054897.c100204.m3164&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140407115239%26meid%3D1a869fa63272435eb4a5f60c660a6850%26pid%3D100204%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D30%26sd%3D381053077537
I can't believe we have an ask slashdot that basically says "how can i transfer files between two modern network compatible machines?"
If you can get it hooked up to a network, you might be able to virtualize it. I have an old PCMCIA ethernet card that I use for such nightmares...
PCMCIA memory card might do it, if you could find one (or more) spare?
Finding a real genuine PCMCIA memory card might be hard.
But they are directly compatible with CF card.
So using a dumb CF card to 16bit pc card adapter gives a way to copy the data out of the old machine.
Then putting the CF card into any USB card reader (or in a pinch, a CF card to IDE adatper, as long as you pay attention to PIO vs UDMA) will help copying the data into a modern machine.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Email the files from the old machine to yourself and read them on the newer machine.