Why serial and parallel?

Why do you need IDE onboard? USB to IDE should cover that just fine.

You can also get USB 3.5" and even 5.25" (Greaseweazle for 5.25") and use an external enclosure for 5.25" drives.

What is the purpose for PCI slots?

You can also get PCIe firewire cards that have support at least up to Windows 10. I suspect Windows 11 support is also there.

Personally, I would rather use a modern system with modern software for data recovery.

That way, if a part dies, it is much easier to find a useable replacement.

The DDR-era was a bit before my time, I'm afraid.
Back then ordinary users had an AC1 or HC 900/KC 85/KC 87 with an U880 running at about 2 MHz, 2 to 64 KB of RAM..
In the office or factory, the PC 1715 was quite common, I think. Also U880 based. Schools had BIC A 5105 models.
Professional users had an A 7100, A 7150 or EC 1834 with 256 KB of RAM and an K1810WM86 running at about 5 MHz. A popular OS was DCP (besides MUTOS and SCP).

Edit: It was meant as a joke. DDR (RAM)/DDR (country)..

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-06-30, 14:12:

Why serial and parallel? […]
Show full quote

Why serial and parallel?

Why do you need IDE onboard? USB to IDE should cover that just fine.

You can also get USB 3.5" and even 5.25" (Greaseweazle for 5.25") and use an external enclosure for 5.25" drives.

What is the purpose for PCI slots?

You can also get PCIe firewire cards that have support at least up to Windows 10. I suspect Windows 11 support is also there.

Personally, I would rather use a modern system with modern software for data recovery.

That way, if a part dies, it is much easier to find a useable replacement.

Parts are not a concern except for the 1.2mb floppy. With modern systems, you have one major issue: translation of formats are not as good as you might think. Sure, you can bring that file forward, but it's going to break on a modern computer at some point. Whereas with our setup, we can literally use XP to translate older file formats into something like .doc and then port those forward with Linux into a .docx format without losing the file integrity.

The HP Compaq nx9040 laptop is one of the most loaded laptops of the early 2000's DDR era. Has practically everything except the older 5 1/4" drive.

A 5 1/4" drive can actually connect through the parallel port, as well I read.

CPU is a Pentium M so it doesn't get hot. Has:

3.5" floppy drive
DVD/CD drive
USB
Firewire 1394
RJ45 ethernet
RJ11 phone/modem
parallel/printer port
serial port
vga 9-pin dsub
s-video out
pcmcia 32-bit

Capybara wrote on 2026-07-09, 16:31:

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-06-30, 14:12:

Why serial and parallel? […]
Show full quote

Why serial and parallel?

Why do you need IDE onboard? USB to IDE should cover that just fine.

You can also get USB 3.5" and even 5.25" (Greaseweazle for 5.25") and use an external enclosure for 5.25" drives.

What is the purpose for PCI slots?

You can also get PCIe firewire cards that have support at least up to Windows 10. I suspect Windows 11 support is also there.

Personally, I would rather use a modern system with modern software for data recovery.

That way, if a part dies, it is much easier to find a useable replacement.

Parts are not a concern except for the 1.2mb floppy. With modern systems, you have one major issue: translation of formats are not as good as you might think. Sure, you can bring that file forward, but it's going to break on a modern computer at some point. Whereas with our setup, we can literally use XP to translate older file formats into something like .doc and then port those forward with Linux into a .docx format without losing the file integrity.

So why not just use a VM if you need to run an older OS, such as XP.

Hyper-V will run it just fine and you can do Linux VMs as well

Folder sharing via Hyper-V and the host OS let you seamlessly transfer files between VMs and the host OS.

For the floppy drives, get a Greaseweazle. There are STL files available to print enclosures that hold the Greaseweazle, the needed power supply for the floppy drive(s) and the floppy drives themselves.

If you're looking to do data recovery, use a more modern rig. You can do serial, parallel, IDE, SCSI, etc over USB and/or SATA. Firewire cards exist in a variety of slot interfaces. You'll get better speed and reliability for disk imaging with a newer system too. For floppies, use something like a Greaseweazle so you can do proper recovery. I have one and it works for all sorts of disks like my early Commodore stuff all the way to the latest floppy standards. Also pick up a Tableau T3458is or similar so you can do read only images easily without messing up a customer's data. I picked one up on ebay for under $50 last year and it is awesome for the task. I recommend ZIP drives and a PCMCIA to PCI interface as well, since I've had numerous people bring me those types of storage devices for data transfer.

With a slightly more modern system you'll also be able to virtualize OSes to have an all-in-one box to recover things from different filesystems on other platforms like Commodore/Amiga, Mac, DOS, Windows, Linux, Sun, VMS, etc.

hmm... so I have 2x win9x pc's , 2x win xp machines... pretty much with all the possible ports imaginable... and with so much room to expand...

never even thought of data recovery... but i m pretty sure with a bit of an upgrade i can read and write pretty much anything... floppys , iomega , cd s , dvds , the big diskette thing before the floppy , even though i doubt that there are people that have stored anything on those as the storage so low...

native windows 9x , windows xp , pretty much anything else would work on win 11.

My retro build, win 98 machine

if you live in the uk , i am actually selling the mobo , cpu , cooler and ram 😀