Posted on 10/12/2013 8:25:24 AM PDT by ottbmare
Back in the early 1980s I was a first-adopter and bought an AT&T 6300 PC. Believe it or not, it still fires up and runs (though the monitor fizzes now and won't display anything). It runs MS-DOS and had Wordstar on it.
I backed up the work I had on that machine with both hard copies and floppy disks, (you young whipper-snappers might have heard of those), but they were all destroyed in a fire. Always intended to ask someone if there was a way to get the information off the old hard drive, but I kept thinking, "mañana," and the years went by.
Now I am getting ready to leave my home of 22 years and am looking to throw things out. Before I take this faithful classic machine to the dump, does anyone know of a way, thirty + years later, to get data off this machine? Stories of daughter's childhood, a lot of correspondence, work writing, book proposals, and other stuff are there. It would be nice to have it back. But I'm poor (if I weren't broke I wouldn't be leaving this house) so I can't spend thousands.
Ideas, suggestions, contacts, or links would be most gratefully received.
I could give it a shot, I have some older machines, do you by chance live anyplace near central VA? I work for beer.
If it has a standard hard drive (IDE) you might be able to use a SATA/IDE to USB adapter.
That allows you to plug the hard drive into a newer machine and possibly read the data.
I did that when my old XP crashed. The adapter would not read my C:\OS drive, but it did read my data partion D:\ drive and I was able to copy files to my new desktop.
Google SATA/IDE to USB adapter. They cost around $15 to $20.
Use the floppy drive.
For about $20 you can get an external hard drive adapter at most computer sellers. http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B002OV1VJW
Then you plug it into another computer and access the old drive to copy the files. IF the computer hard drive has an IDE interface this might work.
There are other ways but they are expensive or require a lot of technical knowledge. Beer might also be an option.
Ping!
Very sorry to hear you are leaving your home.
The economy sucks.
Wrong thread?
( the older computer geeks will get the reference)
CC
Yes, it does. Thanks for the condolences. I’m really sad about losing the family homestead and so are my adult kids.
And thanks to all of you guys for your suggestions. I don’t know if this has an IDE interface but I’m trying to find out online. If it does, and this adapter can actually transfer the data to my win 7 machine, there has to be some way, surely, to translate the old material into something that could be read and understood on a more modern machine.
If you can post here on it, you have internet access.
If you have internet access - you can open a gmail account, and email those vital documents to yourself. Google has a much larger account size, than the entire hard drive of your old computer - so everything should fit nicely.
It is old enough some collector types might want it. I see them on e-bay for up to 299.95. Maybe you could trade the computer for the data. Maybe a small independent shop. This is pre IDE so the the external drive stuff won’t work. Transfer with a serial cable to a newer computer is a option. But this takes somebody who knows DOS well. There are ways to get it done cheaply.
That computer was built at a time when email had been invented but the Internet was just a gleam in the eye of some scientists. It does not have Internet access. I’m writing this from my work iPhone and usually post from a Toshiba Win 7 laptop.
Thanks! I’ll bookmark that and if I can get the files off the old machine I will use it. Much appreciated.
If you want to keep digital data, you need to be prepared to migrate it to newer technologies before the old technology disappears. I'm sure many of us still have data stored on 3" floppies and even CDs that may quickly become no longer retrievable. Think of all the 8mm home movies and VHS recordings we have of important family events that may be lost for our grandkids or great grandkids because the technology to play them is long gone.
Good luck
How big is the hard drive? Probably only 10MB?
Does it have big 5 inch floppy drive or 3.5 in. drive?
If it has the big floppy, I’m wondering if you couldn’t replace it with a 3.5 and then copy files onto that?
M4L
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