VOGONS


Reply 20 of 52, by valnar

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Two of the three ZIP drives I owned died, one with the click of death. As for the third one, it probably still works, but all my ZIP disks are bad now. The only thing I would trust ZIP disks for is a temporary data transfer, like how you'd use a CDRW. So in that case, it would probably be sufficient for the purpose of this thread. Keep the data on there less than a day and it should hold up. 😮

Reply 21 of 52, by Shodan486

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the ''in-those-days-mighty'' LPT cable 😀. LPTLink was quite the fastest (if you had it) solution (not talking about the transfer rate), no boring and long installation/configuration of any devices, just to have a Dos Navigator or other stuff...Yes, it wasn't that fast (now talking about the data transfer), but you could wait those 10 (or less) minutes to transfer DOOM 2, right? 😈

MOBO: PVI-486SP3 Rev 1.2
CPU: POD-83
RAM: 2x16MB
VIDEO: Matrox Millenium 2MB/Voodoo2 12MB/Video Blaster VT300
AUDIO: SB Vibra16 FM
SCSI: 72GB 15k RPM HDD/YAMAHA CD-RW 16x/ZIP drive + FDD drive
NIC: 3Com Etherlink III
PSU: 230W Generic
OS: Win95 OSR2.5

Reply 23 of 52, by Shodan486

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Gosh you got me 😀 , forgot about this little NUISANCE of technological (de)progress. I mostly use my laptop FS Esprimo 9250 which has a docking station and the LPT of coure (thanks japs, I love you for this). But yes, average systems don't possess this port anymore...ufff, so I would suggest some LPT PCI card 😁... otherwise yes, the USB->IDE solution (which I use frequently) is tedious, but acceptable still (hope for a long time).

MOBO: PVI-486SP3 Rev 1.2
CPU: POD-83
RAM: 2x16MB
VIDEO: Matrox Millenium 2MB/Voodoo2 12MB/Video Blaster VT300
AUDIO: SB Vibra16 FM
SCSI: 72GB 15k RPM HDD/YAMAHA CD-RW 16x/ZIP drive + FDD drive
NIC: 3Com Etherlink III
PSU: 230W Generic
OS: Win95 OSR2.5

Reply 24 of 52, by rfnagel

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Shodan486 wrote:

Yes, it wasn't that fast (now talking about the data transfer), but you could wait those 10 (or less) minutes to transfer DOOM 2, right? 😈

Hehe, I remember back in 2005 backing up my entire 486's hard drives, a total of about 8 GB using NC5 and a parallel cable... it took most of the day or so <G>.

(re: 'click of death')

I had totally forgotten about that. I still have my (still working) ZIP drive, but it was the fourth one that I had went through after buying the original back in the day. The fourth one was a keeper though.

Now, their tape backups were a different story... I never found a Ditto that worked worth a crap (that is, except for the cool little red LED in it <LOL> -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_486DX4-100.htm ). The one that is (still) in my 486 was the *tenth* replacement that I got from Iomega, an even that one NEVER made a single dependable backup! On the other hand though, I *did* aquire an Iomega t-shirt and 10 ZIP floppies from Iomega for my troubles 😀

Rich ¥Weeds¥ Nagel
http://www.richnagel.net

Reply 25 of 52, by Dominus

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Moderator
Rank
DOSBox Moderator

New IDE-USB adapters don't like old HDDs and old 386s don't like new HDDs...

Ah, right, so scratch that 🙁

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the ''in-those-days-mighty'' LPT cable

rfnagel mentioned it, only he called it parallel cable, same thing 😀

keropi, maybe burning CDs is still an option. As long as you have the burner standing somehwere firm, you don't need to have it in a 5 1/4" drive bay. If you happen to live in Europe, I have a Plextor px-w1210ts CD-RW drive (SCSI) I would wish to sell 😀

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 27 of 52, by Shodan486

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Nah, I must have been sleeping while browsing this thread, you're right Dominus...thanks for pointing out, at least for others 😀

MOBO: PVI-486SP3 Rev 1.2
CPU: POD-83
RAM: 2x16MB
VIDEO: Matrox Millenium 2MB/Voodoo2 12MB/Video Blaster VT300
AUDIO: SB Vibra16 FM
SCSI: 72GB 15k RPM HDD/YAMAHA CD-RW 16x/ZIP drive + FDD drive
NIC: 3Com Etherlink III
PSU: 230W Generic
OS: Win95 OSR2.5

Reply 28 of 52, by GL1zdA

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
prophase_j wrote:
GL1zdA wrote:

I planned to use ZIP/Jaz drives, but they are to fragile.

My zip drive and disk have had some fun times, but never stopped working. Going on 11 years old. As long as your drive dosen't have the "click of death", I would think this solution as ideal next to networking. Make me wonder what you plan/are doing to yours 😀

I think the disks I bought are bad. When I insert them, the Jaz drive will have to read it for at least 2 minutes to show them in Explorer. Then I can copy files, but it's very unreliable - it fails on large files, sometimes I can't copy the files back.

getquake.gif | InfoWorld/PC Magazine Indices

Reply 29 of 52, by 386DX40

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

On any old system with a PCI slot, such as my 486 and early pentium systems running Win95 OSR2.1 and Win98 I have had great success using Dynex branded 2-port USB 2.0 PCI cards easily found on ebay along with old Sandisk Cruzer 256MB and 512MB flash drives. These cards have a VIA chipset, and drivers are available on VIA's website. Good luck.

Links: http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.html

USB support for DOS (I have not tried this yet): http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/203.html

Reply 30 of 52, by ux-3

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

In case it wasn't mentioned, MS Dos contained a utility called interlink, which could help you.

Retro PC warning: The things you own end up owning you.

Reply 31 of 52, by QBiN

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I'm with 5u3 on this one. Get an old 3Com NIC... 3c509 for ISA or 3c905 for PCI. You can't go wrong. You can even get DOS SMB clients to work so you can transfer files to/from your shared folders on XP/Vista/Win7

Reply 32 of 52, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I've been using 2.88 meg floppies to transfer data across.

Ofcourse it's only double that of normal floppy drives and it's not easy getting enough parts for just an extra 1.5 meg transfer space.
If I ever needed to transfer more I think I'd either use a zip drive (which I got enough spare parts for) or just use a slave IDE drive to transfer stuff from PC to PC.

Reply 33 of 52, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Any ethernet ISA card for IPX + Magelink never failed for me for transfering files directly. Magelink is a DOS program though however it works beautifully with DOSBox Megabuild with IPX passthrough 😀

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 34 of 52, by SquallStrife

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I took the easy way out... Windows for Workgroups.

Don't hurt me!

Reply 35 of 52, by robertmo

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
h-a-l-9000 wrote:

New IDE-USB adapters don't like old HDDs and old 386s don't like new HDDs...

how about old IDE-USB adapters?
is the usb-ideonly (nosata) enough?

Reply 36 of 52, by rgart

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

there's nothing simpler than laplink5 (ll5.exe) and a serial cable connecting two 386/486 computers to xfer your files.

virtually no settings and nothing to configure. plug it in and go.

Reply 38 of 52, by Mau1wurf1977

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I swear by using 3.5" and 5.25" SATA HDD bays / caddies. Just pull em out and insert them into a dock on the desktop 😀

It does require a PCI SATA controller card though. But that's not an issue if you build a fancy MS-DOS Time-Machine!

mTCP sounds awesome I must say. Using a newer CD drive and simply erasable CDs (CDRW) also works quite well.

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 39 of 52, by retrofool

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Back in the mid 90's I acquired 6 Iomega 90 MB Bournelli SCSI drives and their disks from a school that was just throwing them out. To this day I use them in my 8088 to 486 machines for transfering files and I have one of them in a Win2k machine I purpose built as my "universal file accumulator machine" which also has a 5.25 floppy drive, LS-120 floppy drive, a CD burner, DVD burner, and of course functions with USB drives and is easily accessible on my home network. In all this time I've only ever had one of the 6 Bournelli disks die, the other 5 still work fine.

can't seem to throw anything out...