5 ways to get data from and to your retro machine

In this video we're going to cover 5 ways of getting data from and to your old retro machine. In this case I'm going to be using my Commodore PC-20, an XT machine from the mid eighties.
Older retro machine don't have a lot going for them in terms of connectivity. You cannot insert a USB thumb-drive or a cd to get data in or out.
Here I'm going to cover 5 options that can be used when dealing with an old XT machine. We'll
- cover null modem cables
- laplink cables
- iomega zip drives
- XT-IDE cards
- ethernet cards
I'll be going over every method and show you some benchmarks.
- Null modem serial : www.nullmodem.com/NullModem.htm
- Laplink cable : www.nullmodem.com/LapLink.htm?...
- Palmzip driver for Iomega zipdrive : leute.server.de/peichl/palmzip...
- XT-IDE Universal BIOS : www.xtideuniversalbios.org/
- XT-IDE card used here : www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-p...
- Info on MS Network client for XT machines : www.tapatalk.com/groups/pre32...
If you're interested in
- retro computers / PC's
- retro hardware (ranging from 8088 up to pentium class machines)
- the occasional guide or teardown
- classic IBM / Commodore / Philips / .... gear
then please check out the other video's on my channel : / @retrospector78 and don't forget to like / subscribe and share !
Thx

[@SpunkMayo]

This channel deserves more views

[@DrYosh2]

This content is too intelligent. The unwashed (m)asses only want to see mindless garbage.

[@International_Criminal_Court]

One of the greatest (if not greatest) Retro culture channel I have ever seen here on YT. Subscribed! 👏

[@AirwolfPL]

Running intersrv on the more recent PC (in my case it was 386) and interlnk on the old one (in my case XT I was backing up) was several times faster then running it the other way around.

[@alextirrellRI]

I'm surprised you didn't mention that you were using an SD to CF adapter--I'm also glad to know they work. I've found finding compatible CF cards is a pain.

[@qillerdaemon9331]

That parallel/LapLink cable brings back memories of using a hand-made cable to hook up together two Linux (or *BSD, or one of eacj) and use PLIP to make a simple two node network. It wasn't very fast, I seem to remember it being maybe two or three times faster than a dial-up modem, but it was fast enough to play Doom or other fairly graphics-lite games. Or copy files, even set up UUCP, or play with "old-fashioned" Unix network utilities. I even used PLIP to control my Minix v2 box that in turn controlled our original DSL connection. Those were fun and certainly educational days!

[@WarrenPostma]

Laplink cables! Good memories!

[@VK2FVAX]

I think the MS-DOS networking video you've mentioned you want to do may help a lot of people. Nice video!

[@RetroSpector78]

It is coming ... already got lots of footage but these type of videos take a bit longer to make ... and have 2 more I need to finish first ... and just got back from a 2 week holiday :)

[@stefanocrespi5424]

Hook up a CF is always my preferred method, but I have an IBM PS/1 that use proprietary ISA and IDE busses, so Serial link was the choice. Even if the CPU was a 286@10MHz I managed to reach excellent speed using a 7wire serial cable along with LAPLINK 5.0 that supports data compression. More than a Megabyte per minute if I recall correctly. I would also suggest FILEMAVEN a freeware file transfer program for DOS. Time for a new test! ;-) Keep up the good work!

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Null modem cables were my standard for transfers between computers for years. Ah the good ol days. Heck if a lot easier (and faster) with SD cards nowadays.

[@Hal9526]

Very interesting comparison! Thank you.

[@RetroSpector78]

Thanks a lot appreciate it ... Feel free to like / subscribe share and spread the word.

[@elibitrick]

personally i like my first computer a gatway2000 with a am486dx133 running with a xt-ide even if it dose cost 60+ usd i love it i also have a netgear ea201 16bit isa Ethernet card its running 3 OS,s dos 6.22 win95 and antix linux just in case anyone is wondering antix will run with a 8 bit controller i wasn't sure at first also i agree (spunk mayo) This channel deserves more views

[@jasonb4370]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help

[@MyRicardex]

Great video!! Please continue!!

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx ! Planning to ... !

[@gregorymcmahon876]

Very awesome video.

[@gazboh]

Thanks alot, still got my Null modem cable, but i also have my old Imega Zip drive to with plenty of disks :D

[@lelandclayton5462]

There are adapters you can buy that make Serial go over UTP Category cable. So you can cheapy make a Null Modem Cable. There are also adapters for Parallel as well. If you have a System that doesn't have Parallel or Serial you can use USB converters or even buy a PCI card if your modern computer still has PCI. What I use is a WiFi232 adapter and a special Bootdisk that had MS-Client and just map the drive so I could access it my Linux Machine running a VM with Windows 95. Everynow and then I have been tinkering with a Unix/BSD build that can run on a 8088 and see if I can use that to mount a FAT16 DOS Partition and use it for file transferring. I mostly get a hold of 386 Systems so the DOS MS-Client with a TCP Stack is plenty. I need to get one of those Floppy USB Emulators, started running into Floppies diying on me. It's been a while since having to do file transferring with old systems. I've been working on and off a homebrew Z80 system.

[@lets-learn-tech]

i enjoyed watching this video so much, thanks

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, Wow , a very nicely put video ( ok your other videos are very well done as well ) Just a few notes from what i have experienced - this is not criticism but just some thoughts and notes that other people viewing may find usefell. Null modem cable is the simplest and slowest, however you can have a 3 wire null modem transmit to receive, plus the opposite and also a common ground, this will work but will use software XON/XOFF flow control -it is not a problem, it just will use CPU cycle to determine what to do, as the software is doing CRC checks all the time for error correction is it probably adding say 5% overhead and slowness. This is overcome with the hardware control which is extra wiring in the null modem serial cable, but in reality the CPU is still doing the checks anyway, it is just using hardware interrupts to stop the flow ( or software to hardware signals ) At one stage, we were almost forced to use null modem serial cables to get saved files of a 360 5.25 floppy machine to a newer 720 / 1.44 3.5 floppy machine before we had enough money to afford 2 floppies or had a machine new enough to run the hot new hardware. - At this stage i was just using PCtalk or Telix modem software to transfer the files. Parallel null modem cables, as mentioned standard parallel will work, on more modern PC's say 486 / Pentium you can get enhanced an bi-directional parallel, how much faster it is i am not sure, but in printing to say a HP laser 2 it is actually faster as i found out at work back in the early 90's, newer PC with the faster parallel port made printing A4 pages on the same printer and same driver faster. Zip drive, oh yeah the external click of death, actually i had one and did not have a problem in the 6 years that i owned it, i did sell it with the P100 i had at the time, later on i had a apple ( Performa all in one ?? ) with a build in scusi version and found 2 left over zip floppies that i ended up giving 1 each to my kids to store there homework - they ran apples with system 6 or 7 at school - this was before Imac and OSX At the moment i have a Gateway Pentium 2-233 with a IDE version of the zip drive, it works fine, i have base install backed up, full dos, backed up , dos and games backed up, and another zip disk with dos and Win 98 Lan cards, work well, most older ones would be 10meg if you are lucky 10/100 in later PCI, but not saying that a 16 bit cant to 10/100, i dont know i dont have one. Last year in a garage clean up i threw out all my co-ax lan cards and my 8 bit SMC and NE2000 8/16 bit cards. funny late on i found my driver floppy's and also a cd rom i had burnt in @ 1995 with all of my hardware floppies saved on it. I still recall initializing the cards then loading LSL / IPXODI etc etc Not sure when INTERSVR and INTERLNK was available in MS-DOS , but definitely on 6.22 ( i dont think it was on 5 but that is a guess ) But, i use to fastlynx 2 and laplink 5 ( i think i have 3 somewhere - but i did buy 5 with the double ended 9 and 25 pin serial cable ) and also later on PC anywhere - some thing tells me i used xtree pro, but that would have been after getting the 2 pc connected and drives mapped To back up complete floppies or boot / install cd's and transfer i used DCF - disk copy fat, this read a floppy and saved it as one large file. One thing to remember all of these will only run on native dos, you cannot run them in a dos session or use Win XP or newer as they donot have full hardware access to peripherals. If you want to copy to a XP machine, you will need to partition the drive and format a fat16 ( the entire fat12 / fat 16 / fat 16b will take to long to explain ), then just boot of a dos 5-dos 6.22 dos boot disk, you will only see the dos fat 16 portion of the hard drive - the XP version being NTFS will be invisible - you can now run the dos software to connect to older machines Fun days - The best use of a null modem cable - Playing 2 man doom !!! The best use of network cards - playing 4 man doom at home Regards George

[@markg3506]

Nice comparison

[@AnotherMaker]

I absolutely love your channel and I'm not sure if you even see comments from this far back but I'm curious if you had to make any kind of configuration changes to get that compact flash card to work alongside the MFM. I burned about half a day trying to get the two to play nice together on any machine and couldn't do it. Any advice?

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

Hmmm... I remember using actual floppies to fill up the MFM HDD of my XT. But later I replaced the whole thing with a 8-bit SCSI card and I could actually find a PCI Adaptec SCSI controller that I managed to persuade to work in my S1155 Win7 PC - it was a big gap I jumped here. Other cases I usually stick to CF cards and CF-IDE adapters. But XT (and very oldschool AT) is still a hard nut to crack. Next time I'll try the NIC approach - but not to copy via network but as a vessel for XTIDE BIOS. We'll see, I'm really curious. (CF cards are mighty convenient. A simple USB card reader is enough to connect them to any modern PC. I'd love to use them for XTs too.)

[@enilenis]

Have to mention that if you are using Norton Commander, then for serial and parallel connection you don't need any additional programs. Norton Commander has support built in. It's in one of the tabs. Don't remember off the top of my head. I think it's the second one from the right, direct connection something... hard to recall after 35 years.

[@yakovkhalip9714]

nice video ! In my practise I use good old Norton commander 4.0 and LPT-null modem to transfer data - on other side usually a notebook with PCICMIA->CF card or win98se and usb device...

[@logipilot]

What is the pinout for norton with lptnull?

[@yakovkhalip9714]

@@logipilot I use standard null modem lpt cable - bought it on computer market about 2006, when baegan to collect and use vintage computers

[@morantaylor]

I used a SCSI controller with a 1GB hdd attached to backup my HP Vectra 35's MFM drive, fast to connect and DOS 6.22 was able to see the whole capacity. Cant remember if it was using 8bit or 16bit ISA slot I think the old Adaptec card could handle either.

[@ianchan2624]

thx man u da best

[@DeBovenkamer]

Most of the time I use the ZIP solution, using GUEST iomega software. But, some machines only have DOS3.X and that does not work with GUEST... So I guess I'll try the null modem, looks like a nice way to share files!

[@retropcs88]

You can use Norton Commander directly for the serial null modem cable. It does not map it as a new drive but you can copy files directly.

[@RetroSpector78]

I also read that everywhere but I believe I could not find it in this version ... will need to take another look.

[@pentiummmx2294]

i use total commander

[@ropersonline]

4:32: "I actually purchased this one as a LapLink cable." That's somewhat confusingly put, because it sounds like you're talking about the cable you're cutting up, but you're really cutting up another cable to make a LapLink cable (like the one you also purchased at some stage in the past).

[@RetroSpector78]

Well I did purchase it because it was described as a LapLink cable but it turned out to be a simple passthrough cable.But perhaps I should have been more clear.

[@jecepede]

@@RetroSpector78 That explaines a lot. I use to use a parallel Laplink cable and it beat serial by a factor of two-and-a-half / three.

[@dimkir100]

Yeah I also got confused - why buy laplimk cable and then cut it open...

[@hypergl6974]

Can you use on the same network card the rj45 from the router/server side and then continue with the bnc to the older pc's that only have bnc?

[@darak2]

Excellent video! I use similar methods even with a more modern DOS machine. CF cards are just convenient. I never knew about nwlink, though. I've used a null modem cable to connect to a linux box using TELEMATE, and used Z-Modem to transfer files, just like I used to do back then with BBSs. I wonder if that's faster compared to NWLINK. In any case, a network card with telnet was much faster.

[@RetroSpector78]

Ethernet is nice, especially on AT machines ... on an XT it is really pushing it, and once your network drivers and protocol is stack is loaded, there really isn't all that much you can do anymore ..... My hopes of running a multiplayer game on my XT with sound and hooked up over ethernet were pretty much shattered :)

[@SenileOtaku]

here's where I'd be putting the MFM drive into a much newer machine with ISA slots but better other hardware (you'd probably have to disable the IDE channels). Copy the data off, then put the disk back in the XT-class one. Not anything I could test anymore, as I lost the last of my ISA-slot machines in a house fire 10+ years back. These days I look at videos like these with an eye to what hardware collectors are looking for in case I see anything at flea markets, etc. EDIT: apparently there is also an 8-bit ISA USB card available too.

[@edward_grabczewski]

INTERLNK and INTERSVR come with DOS 6. My IBM 5150 comes with DOS 2.10. Which comms options work with the IBM 5150?

[@mareksierocinski]

I really liked this video, thank you! What I was found missing is: 1. You didn't mentioned about cost. By cost I mean: a) cash (eg. I bet that CF card reader + CF card itself costs more then serial cable) b) time - how much time you spend (eg. on moding LPT cable) 2. True that CF card was the fastest, but you have it on card now. The same with ZIP. IMO you should show also how much time it took to copy data to your PC from this CF and ZIP cards. Right now it's not perfectly 1:1 coparision. (In my opinion) 3. Max supported capacity of CF card. ZIP card has 100Mbit, right? And CF card? Do you know max supported capacity? Thanks one more time! Cheers!

[@baghdadiabdellatif1581]

Thank you the rs 232 voltage level is 5 volt or +-15volt?

[@ajschot]

I use a zip drive on my old ps/2 286, after the harddisk died and a SCSI or IDE sort of card with MCA connection was too expensive if i could find one... it was the cheapest way to use the zip drive, it is a bit slow, specialy if you want to play games that need data for levels etc. But it works... on other old machines (my 386, 486 and p1 and p2) i use a sd or cf solution wich also works very well

[@adamkepinski]

Hey @RetroSpector78, maybe you would like to make a video about connecting old hardware to... well more modern PCs? We have 3.5" floppies working via USB, but what about MFM drives? What about 5.25" floppies? Maybe that's a interesting subject? Cheers!

[@etms]

PC to PC, too easy :D :)

[@RetroSpector78]

I see a challenge coming ..... ? :)

[@geebee8540]

Those 8bit coax cards are actually ARCnet. Very nice for a long haul network (got up to 750m in the day). Also better than ethernet in congested networks (token ring messaging) even if only 2.5Mbps.

[@retronoobtech8551]

Very interesting video, but i would ask: if you are gonna use the null modem cable and you can’t put interlnk on 5,25 floppy (i.e. You have some other machines so you can copy files between 3,5 and 5,25) what would you do in that scenario? Someone could simply swap the floppy disk drive, but there is actually a software solution for that, if you don’t mind typing some basic lines …

[@oso2k]

What about adding an IDE Zip drive to transfer data out of an old box? Lots of compatibility since it’s IDE.

[@bencollins5937]

Would a serial to USB null modem cable work too please?

[@kenviv]

hello, your videos are great and well done, how is it possible to send you photos of an old card whose function I do not understand is a pentium 3.

[@RetroTinkerer]

Hello, would you say that it would be as fast or faster running programs/games via Ethernet than directly on one of those very old drives?

[@RetroSpector78]

Would need to check. Will try to do that. I imagine it’s not just IO bound but also cpu bound when doing networking on these xt class machines. And they are really slow :)

[@Vlad-1986]

If you really need to use floppy disks: Friendly reminder that there is a software program called "Hacha". It'll split any file (like a zip file) into equally sized parts you can join later. That way you can move files over 1.44 mb in size

[@christopherhenkel]

Can you post the LAN Adapter Setup Program software? It looks like it would be helpful in setting up generic NE2000 NICs. I can't seem to find any copies online.

[@RetroSpector78]

I've updated some links in the description. Some of the links in the lanmanager article were broken but you should be able to piece everything together. It's just a very painful process to do it on the XT machine. And on my XT machine I wasn't able to install a custom driver during the MS Network Client installation. (So I installed MS Network Client in virtualbox and then copied the resulting NET folder to the XT and took it from there .....). Had some resource conflicts with the NIC, and not all NE2000 drivers seemed to work with this card. But worked out at the end. Will do a more in-depth part on ms-dos networking soon.

[@mqb17]

Thank you! I've been searching for days on how I could possibly get files transferred over to an old Toshiba T4850CT, given I don't have any IDE adapters for the internal HD, and the internal floppy drive is busted. I have null mode serial cable arriving tomorrow ,but was wondering how I was going to use it given all I have is Windows 3.1 on the laptop, with the terminal.exe, and windows vista on my desktop. It has been so long since used MS-DOS 6.22 I forgot about intersvr. I copied it off the DOS install disks onto my vista desktop, used EXPAND to extract it, and it runs on vista. Luckily it's already on the laptop. Hopefully it works. I will know tomorrow when I receive the null modem cable. Anyway, you've earned a new subscriber!

[@RetroSpector78]

Thx a lot ! Good luck and let me know if it worked...

[@mqb17]

RetroSpector78 sure! Would you happen to remember how to get PCMCIA cards working in Windows 3.11 or DOS 6.22? Nothing happens when I try to plug in a CompactFlash card via a PCMCIA adapter.

[@RetroSpector78]

mqb17 never tried pcmcia in msdos 6.22. Read that pc-dos 7 has better pcmcia support.

[@mqb17]

RetroSpector78 yeah, I suppose I could install Windows 95, as this laptop supports it, if I get the Floppy drive working.

[@mqb17]

@@RetroSpector78 How did it work? Well, I was able to run intersvr.exe in Vista, by copying it off an MS-DOS 6.22 disk, and that worked. I was able to run interlnk.exe on the Toshiba T4850CT. The amazing thing was the two machines saw each other, and intersvr on the Vista machine showed a new connection. Interlnk on the laptop also worked, and I had a few new mapped drives! So, I tried to change to one of the drives, and intersvr on the Vista machine crashed with an illegal CPU operation. THANKS WINDOWS. Anyway, I had to resort to downloading Hyper-Terminal on the Windows Vista machine (it was no longer included with Vista,) and run Terminal on Windows 3.11 on the laptop, and you guessed it, transfer files over one by one using XMODEM over the null-modem cable. 4.5 hours... it's going to take 4.5 hours to transfer the Windows 95 OEM installation files, a whopping 24MB. It won't let me connect faster than 19200 Bps. I also bought a UNITEK IDE to USB 3.0 adapter (I had forgotten I ordered one). But guess what? The laptop IDE drive doesn't show up on my Windows machine. OTHER IDE drives do, just no the laptop one. So I tried to use RUFUS to format an 8GB drive as a bootable FreeDOS drive, and copied all the Windows 95 OSR 2.5 installation files, and popped that in to the laptop. It booted as far as "Starting FreeDOS", and just hangs there. :( Oh, disk 6 finished copying over null-modem, only 15 to go!

[@PaulsComputerEmp]

Really nice video how about some External USB to IDE cable connect directly to the HDD of the old pc maybe using USB extension cable so you don't have to remove the hard drive. 2nd use a cd/dvd burner.

[@RetroSpector78]

Problem is that these really old PCs don't have an IDE interface. IF they have a hard drive it's going to be an MFM hard drive, and it's not so straightforward to hook those up in an other PC.

[@PaulsComputerEmp]

@@RetroSpector78 www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BRAND-NEW-XT-IDE-ATA-CF-8-BIT-ISA-CARD-FOR-RETRO-COMPUTERS-BOOT-ROM-UK-SELLER/143228603444?hash=item2159170c34:g:L-MAAOSwmjZdnHmG how about something like this for a cd burner or ide to MFM copy

[@PaulsComputerEmp]

@@RetroSpector78 really liking you're videos, thanks for replying

[@grappydingus]

I'd be curious to see the speed of a SCSI external Iomega Zip Drive, given one could find an 8-bit SCSI card that would work.

[@RetroSpector78]

Feel free to send one over and I'll test :)

[@grappydingus]

if I had one, I'd no longer be curious. :D (But years ago when I ran one on my 486, it was quite a bit faster than the parallel port one.)

[@NintenloupWolfFR]

Thank you for the video. How did you made lan manager to work on this ? Every version I find needs at least a 286. Could you provide a link ? I've been trying to make that work since quite some time...

[@RetroSpector78]

Not at my computer now but there are 2 files that require a 286 or up. These 2 can be replaced with the ones from an older version of lan manager. Will post some links in the description afterwards. Will also do a more in-depth video focussing on msdos networking. But it was a pain to setup. Slow and ms network client did not want to read my driver disk.

[@NintenloupWolfFR]

@@RetroSpector78 Thank you a lot !

[@christopherhenkel]

@@RetroSpector78 Posting a MS-DOS networking tutorial on an XT class PC, along with software used, would be helpful.

[@RetroSpector78]

Added some links in the description.

[@RetroSpector78]

@@christopherhenkel I will ... soon .... keep an eye out for it here ... and don't forget to subscribe and share ! :)

[@AzMandius]

imagine this video being seen by many people which don't know how to get data from their Galaxy A20 smartphone to theird Dell XPS 13 notebook

[@RetroSpector78]

Aren’t all of these hipsters using the wireless cloud nowadays ? :)

[@AzMandius]

@@RetroSpector78 "pro" users only can figure out how to use the wireless cloud ecosystem these days :))

[@zarkeh3013]

@@RetroSpector78 Could use a wireless bridge to the XT, where the actual wireless bridge device being more powerful than the XT... ;)

[@broderperdurabo]

Dead floppy on a Toshiba T3200, no way to load packetdrivers, no way to load drivers for a Zipdrive. What to do?

[@pauldiaz4273]

Hi there nice video, where can we download Banner Mania? Thanks

[@CaelThunderwing]

i'm curious to why some perfeer the Zip disk over the SuperFloppy when only dealing w/ the ZIP100 (when dealing w/ the higher capacity ones i can understand)

[@RetroSpector78]

Not aware of the superfloppy. Zip drives are really popular over here so very convenient to use them.

[@MarkTheMorose]

@@RetroSpector78 The laser servo (hence the LS in LS120, the usual name for the 'super floppy' mentioned) technology was briefly considered by IOmega, but rejected. The main advantage of LS120 SuperDisk drives (besides an extra 20MB or so capacity over Zip) is that they are back-compatible with regular floppy disks. Like Zip drives, they were available in external parallel and internal IDE variants. I don't know if there were SCSI models.

[@CaelThunderwing]

@@MarkTheMorose There was, as well as USB Versions, there are 2 models of the USB variant, one that had a SCSI to USB interface inside and uses a really bulky connector thats prone to breaking/shorting, and one thats based on IDE to USB using a standard USB cable you'd find on a SmartUPS or Printer.

[@crapcbm]

ouuuh ... brings back memories :D but btw didn't NC have an internal way to transfer datas via serial / parallel cable? I am not sure but while I am thinking about it ... That was a very easy task ... later ZIPs also have 250MB - I still use them today for backups and transfer big datas between pc and amiga

[@RetroSpector78]

I've only used interlnk / intersvr. Heard good things about fastlynx also in the comments. Also always thought that norton commander could do it but didn't see the option in nc4.

[@crapcbm]

mh... it is soooo long ago we used it ... I would have to dig thru my diskettes and old hard drives and have a look ... give me a week :D (btw the old pre GB size ide drives seem to live for ever ... ) later, I made a LAN cables for the users around me, with a switch in the middle, to cross the wires, so we were able to direct connect 2 computers to copy files and also use the same cable to a LAN HUB. Damn slow, but faster then serial/parallel haha

[@chaoticsystem2211]

Isn't a zip disk floppy on the inside too?

[@edward_grabczewski]

You can buy a BNC to RJ45 adapter. See part number PSG08201 on the CPC Farnell website. I might test mine when my IBM 5150 arrives from the eBay seller.

[@VioletGiraffe]

How about a USB to floppy drive adapter? lets you insert a USB stick that's visible as a floppy to the machine. Costs 15 bucks from a certain Chinese online shop. Mine is on the way :) Also, most modern motherboards still have internal parallel port header which you can use to connect a breakout board with the actual LPT socket. My MSI X370 has it.

[@RetroSpector78]

Goteks are cool, but limited to floppy images. So you can read / write floppy images but cannot bulk copy larger things. You would need to find a way to convert larger datasets into 1.44 or 360kb floppy images, taking a long time to assemble / disassemble on an XT. Also, the gotek runs at floppy drive speeds so not super fast.

[@ropersonline]

@@RetroSpector78 Are you familiar with ARJ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARJ It's really nice for multi-volume-spanning archives, better than PKZIP. Also, if compression isn't important, you can use any number of programs to split files, and then recombine them with only out-of-the-box COPY, with no extra software at all: COPY /B FILEPART.ONE+FILEPART.TWO REJOINED.FIL I think floppy emulators are a good option.

[@misterkite]

I would imagine treating the harddrive as a block device and doing a raw block copy would be much faster than walking the tree and copying files individually. Not sure what dos software could do that though.

[@RetroSpector78]

would need to look into that ... haven't come accross a dd version for msdos.

[@azzajohnson2123]

Considering a lot of these older drives were matched to their controller card the way they were formatted and kept data stored on them was not standard. It was almost different in every drive instance. Hence it’s just easier to copy off everything. Would have been great to see a floppy disk comparison zipping up across spanned disks. Would have taken forever!

[@Scudmaster11]

why did you destroy the parallel cable

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Zip 100 baby, oh yeah. I still have my 1999 G4.

[@Tom2404]

I unsuccessfully tried to connect a Windows 98 PC to my network for hours. Then I changed my nework card to another one and it just worked.

[@broderperdurabo]

Dos 3.2?

[@der.Schtefan]

Back when BASF made hard disks?

[@Captain_Char]

I wish I had modern way of transferring from a CPM machine to a modern machine,

[@elamriti]

thats not bad 35 min

[@hikaru-live]

Comment: If you have the correct software, the Ethernet solution can work even if you have only one local computer, if you also have some kind of cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive available. The software would upload your files to the cloud storage service in this case. (This is technically still two computers, but the other computer is somewhere across the Internet, in someone else's datacenter.)

[@RetroSpector78]

陈北宗 mmm ... doubt that google or dropbox has client software for ms-dos 3.x :) these computers aren’t really made to authenticate against these cloud providers imho. But against a local NAS shouldn’t be an issue.

[@hikaru-live]

@@RetroSpector78 The point is that the other device acting as the TCP/IP connection partner need not to be a local computer. It can be any device anywhere in the Internet, as long as it is publicly accessible. Also it is entirely possible to write a Google Drive or Dropbox client for MS-DOS, if someone is to put the efforts into it.

[@azzajohnson2123]

RetroSpector78 you can do it with floppy bootable Linux 😅

[@pentiummmx2294]

i use total commander rather than interlink

[@ordinosaurs]

TCP/IP has too much overhead for an XT class computer. Netware ipx is much kinder to older hardware.

[@milojkokitic6991]

Wow, why is that crt ghosting so much?

[@RetroSpector78]

This is an effect you see on a lot of green forsfor monitors.... I actually think it looks pretty cool. Appears to be caused by the high intensity fosfor used in the display (needed to make the text crisp and clear). Playing with the controls (dimming the screen a bit) reduces the effect, but you can still see it.

[@azzajohnson2123]

Because the CRT is old as fuck. It’s a characteristic of these old monitors and the way their phosphor works.

[@hubzcaps]

Brugh u forgot 9 track tape. Hehe

[@andreasreich9585]

Just put the hdd into the new pc and copy? :-)

[@RetroSpector78]

Not so easy with these big mfm hard drives. A pain to remove from these big bulky computers, and most modern pc’s don’t have an mfm controller.

[@crapcbm]

mfm died those days very quick (thanks computer god) they were a pain

[@SenileOtaku]

@@RetroSpector78 I wonder if you could use one of those usb2isa "virtual ISA slot" cards. I don't have any old hardware like this anymore, so I can't test it. But if it worked it could be a way to attach an old HDD to a current machine and dump the data off of it.

[@ditasoft]

"modern pc"

[@dimkir100]

Andre Klumpe yeah that was hilarious :)

[@spwim]

I don't think the term "shelling out" applies to an amount of 8 euros XD

[@josemartino5162]

2:52 what should i write on prompt? Intrasurf? Sorry for my english