Computer Antiquary?

[Hawkmoon]

Does anyone have a computer with a functional 5-1/4" HD disc drive and/or a 1.44MB 3-1/2" drive?

I'm trying to clean up a few layers on accumulated "stuff" around my home office space and I have unearthed a few diskettes that I'd be mildly interested in transferring onto a form of media that can be used in newer machines ... like CD-ROM or thumb drive.

[Nick1911]

I have a 5.25 drive machine, an old IBM PC, but I have no clue how I would go about getting it to a more modern format using that computer.

[Cliffh]

My frankenmachine has both.  I haven't used either in a few years, have to run some tests on at least the 3 1/2" - can't test the 5 1/4" 'cause I don't have any disks.  It also has a Zip drive and a CDRW.  Now that I think about it, it may actually be a DVDRW.  I don't believe that Win98 will handle a flash drive.

[lee n. field]

Does anyone have a computer with a functional 5-1/4" HD disc drive and/or a 1.44MB 3-1/2" drive?

I'm trying to clean up a few layers on accumulated "stuff" around my home office space and I have unearthed a few diskettes that I'd be mildly interested in transferring onto a form of media that can be used in newer machines ... like CD-ROM or thumb drive.

I have a 5.25 drive somewhere.  I might even be able to find a floppy cable with the right edge connector.

[Jim147]

I'd have to see if I still have a working IDE CDRW around here. Should be doable. Win95 to CD and then Win7 or Linux to thumb drive.

It won't be till after the first of the year till I have a chance to dig through my stuff but if you don't have it figured out by then remind me.

jim

[Hawkmoon]

There's no hurry. These discs have obviously been sitting here for a very long time ... another few days won't hurt. Heck, they may not even be readable by now.

[vaskidmark]

It's not the data itself that is going to be the problem.  It's the whatchamacallit programming needed to manipulate the 0's and 1's.

Found that out the hard way trying to "recover" some stuff off floppies.  Data was clearly there but kept coming back with a report of being unreadable.  Drive worked great - even able to write to/read from data saved using the current (new) OS.  Whatever Windows version was in use in 1983 was not recognized.  Thank goodness the Dept of Corrections still has not moved any of their legacy prograjs to current platforms - a macihne from that era was located and I got my data off a thermal printer.  Darned near could not copy it without the paper durning dark as night as it was being copied.

stay safe.

[lee n. field]

It's not the data itself that is going to be the problem.  It's the whatchamacallit programming needed to manipulate the 0's and 1's.

Found that out the hard way trying to "recover" some stuff off floppies.  Data was clearly there but kept coming back with a report of being unreadable.  Drive worked great - even able to write to/read from data saved using the current (new) OS.  Whatever Windows version was in use in 1983 was not recognized.  Thank goodness the Dept of Corrections still has not moved any of their legacy prograjs to current platforms - a macihne from that era was located and I got my data off a thermal printer.  Darned near could not copy it without the paper durning dark as night as it was being copied.

stay safe.

no version of windows was in use in 1983.  in 1983 it could have been an apple 2, cp/m machine or dedicated word processor, using an incompatible disk format. not to forget, also possibly a trs-80.

All those eventually fell away from business use under the onslaught of the IBM-PC, but in '83 any of them might still have been in use.

[bedlamite]

IIRC, DOS 2.0 came out in '83, and was the first version to support a hard drive. Windows didn't exist until '86, wasn't really popular until 3.1 came out in the early 90's.

[lee n. field]

http://deviceside.com/fc5025.html

Device Side Data's FC5025 USB 5.25" floppy controller plugs into any computer's USB port and enables you to attach a 5.25" floppy drive. Even if your computer has no built-in floppy controller, the FC5025 lets you read those old disks. And it's not just for IBM PC disks – it also understands formats used by Apple, Atari, Commodore and TI, among others.

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2503

[Scout26]

I might be able to help.  I've still got my 486 tower in the basement.  It has both 5.25 and  3.5 drives with a R/W CD drive.  I could hook those up to the "new" machine we're building.


I've still got a huge pile of 5.25 and 3.5 disks.   Hmmmm.

[lee n. field]

the "new" machine we're building.

probably doesn't have a floppy drive controller built in.

[Doggy Daddy]

I've got an external USB 3.5 inch floppy drive around here somewheres.  Been casually looking for it since I saw this thread.

[AZRedhawk44]

I've got a 3.5" internal drive, but I got rid of my 5.25" drive probably 5 years ago.  It had one of those nasty edge connectors rather than the pin connector styles, and I didn't have any ribbon cables that fit it.

As an aside, I like the planned technological non-obsolescence going on with optical media.  CD's play in DVD players which play in Blu-Ray players (we'll ignore HD-DVD, being the betamax of the early 21st century).  As long as the same size of media remains dominant, the next generation of optical media/drives will probably retain that compatibility.  This is good for the consumer.

[lee n. field]

I've got a 3.5" internal drive, but I got rid of my 5.25" drive probably 5 years ago.  It had one of those nasty edge connectors rather than the pin connector styles, and I didn't have any ribbon cables that fit it.

As an aside, I like the planned technological non-obsolescence going on with optical media.  CD's play in DVD players which play in Blu-Ray players (we'll ignore HD-DVD, being the betamax of the early 21st century).  As long as the same size of media remains dominant, the next generation of optical media/drives will probably retain that compatibility.  This is good for the consumer.

I had someone come in with some 5.25 disks from the 80s, a year or three back.  They wanted to get a resume off one to help with crafting an  obituary.  I happened to have an unused 5.25 drive that I'd squirrelled away, still sealed in the bag.

What I had a hard time finding was a data cable with the  card edge connector.  And, no, I didn't get anything off the disk.  I suspect it might have been an Apple II formatted disk.

[RoadKingLarry]

Is a 30+ year old porn stash really worth the effort?

[Cliffh]

It's not the data itself that is going to be the problem.  It's the whatchamacallit programming needed to manipulate the 0's and 1's.

Good point.  What program/OS was used to write these disks? 

[Hawkmoon]

In my case, until I sort through the diskettes I don't know what program(s) created the files. The one that I unearthed that started me thinking I should try to save some of these antiques is a 5-1/4" diskette (or two or three -- haven't opened the package to check) with a bunch of TrueType fonts on it. Until I can see what they are, I don't even know if there's anything there that's not being offered now built into Windows, but back then, when TrueType was new, the "native" selection was comparatively limited.

Others are probably WordPerfect documents, Quattro Pro spreadsheets, and possibly some Generic Cadd drawing files that probably nothing will read today.

[AZRedhawk44]

Is a 30+ year old porn stash really worth the effort?

Lulz.  About the only thing that would fit is ASCII porn.

http://www.textfiles.com/art/ASCIIPR0N/

Maybe sorta NSFW?  Technically no images...

[geronimotwo]

^^^^ too true,  a 1 mp image would fill each disk!