[chbot] Old computer stuff

[Helmut Walle]

There's one potential issue to be aware of when using old floppy drives 
that have been sitting around unused for a longer time pretty much 
anywhere in NZ (except maybe Central Otago): due to our healthy salty 
sea air the heads can rust, and the rust then destroys the medium... a 
visual inspection of the medium will shows this as circular scratches. 
(Don't ask how I come to know this...)

However, floppy is not the only option. The HD may still mount in 
computers with old PATA controller. Alternatively, seeing the small size 
of only 40 MB, transfer via some sort of cable should also work. The 
gold standard from back then would be 10 Mbaud Ethernet over 50 ohm coax 
cable, but failing that, a
PLIP / laplink cable would work, or even a null modem between the UARTs 
of the old and new computer.

The advantage of the cable-based approaches obviously is that you don't 
copy onto a fairly flaky medium like floppy in the first place. But then 
again, if you run some effective hash sum on the old PC, and then again 
on the system you are ultimately copying the data to, the error risks 
are obviously perfectly manageable.

Kind regards,

Helmut.

On 25/09/16 21:26, Mike Smith wrote:
> I am after a working 1.44MB floppy drive if anyone has one to part
> with, also after a USB floppy drive as well
>
> I have been given the task of backing up a 25 yr old desktop running a
> custom program under MSDOS with no known backups and no working floppy
> drive hence the request for one
>
> I tried connecting the hard drive ( all 40MB)  to a USB to IDE adaptor
> but it wont recognise it
>
> Any help appreciated
>
> Mike
>
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