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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.
Winsock, TCP / IP and telenet.
If it actually has a USB port, which seems doubtful given the presumptive specs - all you need is a flash drive of the smallest possible sort (160 MB!!).
Check your cereal boxes.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm so glad I moved to http://soylentnews.org .
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.
There's a pretty good chance of that failing. Modern cheap SATA/USB to PATA adaptors only talk ATA. ATA over IDE is not the same protocol as the original IDE.
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
you arent running anything usb on the old machine, you are using usb to connect the hard drive of the old machine to a modern machine.
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.
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