Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem 466

Posted by samzenpus from the I'll-never-let-you-go dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem More

Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem

Comments Filter:

  • file transfer (Score:5, Informative)

    by pen-helm ( 1619273 ) * on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:55PM (#49143283) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

      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.

      • Re:file transfer (Score:5, Informative)

        by MrBingoBoingo ( 3481277 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:17PM (#49143517) Homepage
        Probably faster to unplug the hard drive, order an adapter, and let UPS deliver it. The filesystem should be supported by any modern OS. If the disk works it will be a matter of browse and pluck.
        • 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 [telenet.be] that I've successfully used with Windows 3.11 on my Compaq LTE 386.

        • Re:file transfer (Score:5, Informative)

          by onproton ( 3434437 ) <emdanyi@gmail . c om> on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:54PM (#49143755)
          Regarding this idea: a couple of years back I bought this universal hard drive adaptor [amazon.com], since then it has gotten me out of quite a number of jams. After removing the drive, you can attach it to one of the adapter's IDE/PATA/SATA ports and directly access the files via a USB connection from the adapter - I'd say this is probably the least frustrating way to handle this situation.
        • That will work if the hard drive is IDE. If, however, the hard drive is RLL or MFM, then I personally would go the (expensive) route of buying a modern desktop PC with an ISA slot [nixsys.com] and an ISA MFM [amazon.com] or RLL [amazon.com] card. Reportedly from various message boards, "drivers are not needed" when using ISA MFM/RLL cards, and I've never tried it myself. But I'm guessing it's probably true for some version of Windows (e.g. Windows 98 or Windows 2000), which that computer vendor seems to specialize in.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

        Given the specified processor speed as 20MHz I'd say this is a 386SLC hence lacking a USB port.

        Only suggestion I have is finding someone with a 2.5" IDE adapter, an IDE to USB adapter (comes with a PSU usually), a set of screwdrivers and the patience to tear down your Compaq. I could do it, but a: I charge a fortune for such service, b: I don't know where you are.

    • What about a IDE-USB dongle? You may need the power supply - those older notebook drives were a bit much for USB power.
      I don't remember how hard it is to get to the HDD, though - that was a while ago.

      • Some of the IDE->USB kits on ebay come with a molex plugged UK 3 pin PSU, I'm sure if you're in the US you could get a 2 pin US one instead too.
        Some even come with a molex -> SATA power plug adapter too if they're IDE/SATA -> USB adapters, not that the article author would need that one in this particular case :)

    • Two options (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nhtshot ( 198470 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:02PM (#49143377)

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nhtshot ( 198470 )

        Regarding the PCMCIA, that old laptop probably predates cardbus. So, look for one that doesn't have the gold color near the connector.

        3com, Xircom and US Robotics are your best bet for ones that will have drivers available.

      • Came here to say this. Just borrowed an old 10/100 PCMCIA card from a friend to recover some nostalgia from long ago.

        Also there are PCMCIA hard drives if you have the two-unit slot. Depending on your bios those might not even need drivers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Erioll ( 229536 )
        I agree, find SOME way to get that onto a local network, and that will be BY FAR the easiest way to do things. Maybe dig up an old ISA 10Mbps card on Ebay or something, as the original poster suggested if you can't find a suitable PCMCIA card.

        And combining with something said above, it's not difficult to find a usb->serial port device/cable (it's not just pin-out, so it's a device, not merely a cable). Pretty cheap. Same with a null-modem cable. Both together should run you in the range of $20-$40

        • I just happen to have a drawer full of Compaq Conturae. Neat little machines for their time. Haven't done anything with them for years except run automobile OBD diagnostics every year or two to find out why the Check Engine light is lit THIS time. And even that was superceded a few years ago by a USB OBD2 reader on a netbook. I pulled one of the Compaqs out and find that if has a Linksys EC2T Ethernet card in its' PCMCIA slot. I'm sure that WFWG 3.11 will do ethrnet file transfers given an appropriate

      • 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 partiti

    • Old School Kermit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by captjc ( 453680 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:19PM (#49143533)

      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 [wwarthen.com]

      Kermit for DOS [columbia.edu]

      • Kermit isn't as easy as telix [archive.org].

      • Re:Old School Kermit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by goodmanj ( 234846 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:00PM (#49143795)

        Upvote the parent. If you were trying to do this in the early 90s, you'd have either physically moved the disk into a new computer -- and oldschool IDE has a bunch of surprises that will bite the unwary -- or used Kermit.

        Just be aware that your average '90s serial port probably won't work above 57 kilobit/sec, which means transferring 160 megabytes will take the better part of a day.

      • Re:Old School Kermit (Score:5, Interesting)

        by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:11PM (#49143863)

        Kermit is a good choice, should be able to do all he needs with no extra cost as long as he can cable 2 computers together.

        I specifically dislike those telling him to buy a UBS adapter for the old disk drive or other solutions that require spending money and waiting. I do have such an adapter, and a PCMCIA firewire card that would open other options for me, but they are not needed in this case.

        Another option that seems to be ignored is that XP computer he says he also has. At that vintage it likely has USB and Ethernet. I would try swapping the drive into that (if it isn't too thick to fit) and booting the XP computer with a Live Linux CD (the 3.11 Windows disk will likely not boot properly and would not have the needed drivers even if it did). Then from Linux you could easily write the 160 meg drive contents to a USB flash drive or transfer it across ethernet to the destination computer (I would do that with FTP but there are any number of options).

    • there was nothing special about laplink cables, they really were just null modem cables. used to use them a lot back in the day, still even have my 232 breakout box somewhere which I used to use. having said that you are way overcomplicating this. just get a USB to IDE adapter. fast easy and no need for ports that probably don't even exist on his current machine.

    • Laplink might be a good choice. Another good choice, probably faster, would be to try to adapt the hard drive from the old machine to the new machine somehow.

      I'm assuming the hard drive is IDE. If that's the case, a USB-ATA adapter would do it, or another choice would be a SATA-ATA adapter.

      A third option (and the one I used to transfer files from my Amiga to my PC about 18 years ago) is to fire up a terminal progrom on both the old and new machines and connect them via their serial ports with a null-modem

    • But it looks harder to use.

      It was: It needed both boxes to run DOS 6.0 -- same version. Even so, results were not guaranteed.

      Laplink can negotiate its protocol over a std LPT Cable or Null Modem.

      I take out the drives and connect them to a modern box either with a PATA cable to the motherboard or via a USB\PATA connector to the modern box.

  • Pull the disk (Score:5, Informative)

    by borcharc ( 56372 ) * on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:57PM (#49143307)

    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?

    • Since I don't have any mod points want to add my voice to the chorus supporting this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      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.

    • He needs to bribe me to sell my FireWire/usb ide hard drive enclosure.

      I accept cash. Plug the hard drive in, turn it on and plug into any USB port. The USB will. Be slow but faster and cheaper than any other method.

      So I accept beer, scotch, and redeaded women.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        So I accept beer, scotch, and redeaded women.

        Wow, you are one twisted individual :)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Indeed this is the way to go. And I checked the specs; these laptops appear to have IDE drives in them. I can't believe how many people are proposing incredibly complex solutions such as finding a PCMCIA ethernet card and trying to use the old lanmanager protocol to copy files off. Or using a serial cable.

      Every slashdotter should have a IDE and SATA to USB adapter in their toolbox. They are dirt cheap (I own probably three I think) and they are always useful for doing data recovery. Most adapters you c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Heh heh. Now current workstation has the Monkey Virus!

  • Remove Drive and hook to USB (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:58PM (#49143309)
    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.

  • adaptor (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 )
    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 disk and USB connect it to the target machine ... The USB thingies are like dirt cheap ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Noryungi ( 70322 )

      Yup, USB connectors for IDE drive. Either that or use COM port to transfer files with good old crusty Windows hyperterminal. Make sure the COM port is set to the highest possible bandwidth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nutria ( 679911 )

      IIRC, old laptop HDDs weren't designed for easy replacement.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        True on that. Some of them were either hardwired into the board, and others used a flex cable with a custom HDD/power interface cable.

  • 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.

    • Actually this is probably the best answer. I like this better than my own answer of using a serial link.

      I even have such an adapter, and didn't think of it.

  • 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... [amazon.com]

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by adolf ( 21054 )

      you get what you pay for

      If I charge for one item than someone else is charging for something that is functionally and internally identical, whose offering would present the better value: My expensive widget, or someone else's cheaper widget?

  • 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!

  • You could just get yourself one of these adaptors [amazon.com] from Amazon then copy the files directly from one HD to another...

  • Jeez, don't make this harder than it needs to be. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:05PM (#49143403)

    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.

    • LapLink lets you use the parallel port without having to configure TCP/IP stuff. It's raw bytes, more like a really fast null modem cable.

      But why bother getting the right cables (I have some, easy to DIY, but you can't buy them off-the-shelf anymore) and software (some piracy required I imagine). Instead you can use RS232 at 115.2kbps. Google did the arithmetic and unit conversion for me:

      160 Megabytes) / (1125 (bytes / second)) = 1.64609053 days

      Zmodem is pretty slow, but ZedZap/8K-Zmodem is pretty quick and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        LapLink lets you use the parallel port without having to configure TCP/IP stuff. It's raw bytes, more like a really fast null modem cable.

        But why bother getting the right cables (I have some, easy to DIY, but you can't buy them off-the-shelf anymore) and software (some piracy required I imagine). Instead you can use RS232 at 115.2kbps. Google did the arithmetic and unit conversion for me:

        160 Megabytes) / (1125 (bytes / second)) = 1.64609053 days

        Zmodem is pretty slow, but ZedZap/8K-Zmodem is pretty quick and easy to find software that supports it for DOS, Win9x and Linux. If you do not require error detection and flow control, then Xmodem is fast. (recommend you use a null modem cable with flow control RTS/CTS wired, this is almost always wired correctly with off-the-shelf cables). Don't need a 16550 UART for this to work, an 8250 is adequate if you have flow control enabled.

        I'd highly recommend you send ZIP files over your link rather than uncompressed data. If you have enough disk space free, you can use pkzip's multivolume support and archive the entire disk into several managable files. (rar's is even easier to use than pkzip's)

        You're off by a factor of 10, 115kbs is around 11500 bytes/second. Even if his serial port can only handle 56kbs, he could transfer the data in less than 10 hours.

        Xmodem does do simple error checking with a single byte checksum on every packet (admittedly inferior to zmodem's crc32). Though for anything important, he should be able to find an md5 or even sha1 hash program that'll run on his system.

  • what I do (Score:4, Informative)

    by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:15PM (#49143499)

    2.5 inch to 3.5 inch ide adapter, plug into computer copy

  • Zip everything. Null modem serial cable, CKermit on both ends. Done.

  • http://www.amazon.com/USB-SATA... [amazon.com]

    and with a brand name like generic it must be good.

  • Easy. (Score:2)

    by hey! ( 33014 )

    PCMCIA CF card reader, plus fat formatted CF card, plus USB CF card reader.

    Or about a thousand other ways.

  • By using the LPT port and a special (but not too rare or expensive) cable [ebay.com], 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 [ghisler.com] (1.5Mb), and which include that functionality, very easy to use. [ghisler.ch]
  • 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 v

  • 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 trans

  • Pull the drive, access it directly (Score:3)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:34PM (#49143613) Journal

    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.

  • 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:-

    • mount the image and recover the data
    • convert the image into a virtual machine (use VirtualBox).

    I've had to do the same with several dozen boxes so I can keep supporting

  • Can you just run a FTP server on the new machine and FTP up the whole thing? http://www.k7tty.com/Utilities... [k7tty.com]

  • 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

  • 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) An

  • Did you try superuser.com and the like? Or is slashdot becoming a stackexchange clone?

  • It's a compaq aero... hdd is ide 40 pin (Score:5, Informative)

    by Darkelf ( 30761 ) on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:58PM (#49144047) Homepage

    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.

  • Remember objective is to copy files not "computer" (Score:3)

    by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @12:25AM (#49144471)
    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.

  • Pcmcia + compact flash (Score:5, Informative)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @12:49AM (#49144577) Homepage Journal

    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

  • USB to IDE (Score:3)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bert AT slashdot DOT firenzee DOT com> on Friday February 27, 2015 @03:08AM (#49145009) Homepage

    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.

  • Two easy options (Score:3)

    by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @04:48AM (#49145225)

    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

  • USB ATA adapter (Score:3)

    by gshegosh ( 1587463 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @08:15AM (#49145761)
    You can get one for like 5$. Attach the HDD directly to the new computer and copy files over.

  • I used to have one of those. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zelbinion ( 442226 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @01:46PM (#49148079)

    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

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close