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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.
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.
Pull the hard disk and USB connect it to the target machine ...
The USB thingies are like dirt cheap ...
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
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Plug the USB cable into your new or modern computer and away you go.
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.
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.
2.5 inch to 3.5 inch ide adapter, plug into computer copy
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
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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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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"
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
You can get one for like 5$. Attach the HDD directly to the new computer and copy files over.
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.
USB serial port plus Zmodem and your good to go.
I don't see the big issue.
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it takes about 10 clocks to transfer a byte over RS-232 in the most common configuration, 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit. So you can't use kbps here, because Google assumes there are 8 bits in a byte.
3.9 Hours is still the correct number, when ignoring overhead for X/Y/ZModem.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We've spent more time discussing this than it would have taken for this guy to transfer his harddrive over.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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