I think that networking is the way to go, but that also assumes that a network card is installed. I wouldn't build a machine without a network card, but for somebody who doesn't have one yet you still have to go through that step.

Zip disks are another nice solution. Yes, I know about the click of death. If you can find surviving drives that were not affected by that then you have 100MB of storage per removable disk. I have a few parallel port drives for moving around between systems and a SCSI version installed in my Linux machine.

A parallel port hard drive is another reasonable solution. CF cards can also be used with parallel port readers, but the drivers hog a bit of memory.

I had a bad experience using CF as a IDE drive on Amiga, Compact flash standard is not 100% IDE compatible and in some situation not workin. i had bad Amiga story about cf... i prefer to use a genuine ide hard drive or a Disk on module directly cinnected on the mainboard.

dionb wrote:

Exactly the latter, particularly because of DOS' bad habit of not letting you make drives other than C active in another computer. I wouldn't use it for 325MB, or even for32MB.

Well... I have been used to make primaery and extended/logic partitions since around 1995. So I have always been using D, E or even F for transfering of data, whenever I have stuck a harddrive into another computer. So the problem with the primaery partition not being read or detected propperly in another machine is something that I have never really taken notice of. On the other hand. Having two harddrives and therefor two primaery partitions, have never really posed any problems as far as I remember.

This brings me to... If someone have two IDE controllers in a 486 or Pentium-1 system. Then it is just a question of having two harddrives or CF cards on the first controller. You posted a link to one of those, that you mount an CF card in the back of the machine. Setting the permanently attached adaptor or harddrive to master and the one you posted a link to as slave. Then having an optical drive on the secondaery controller. Or if you have only one controller, then use a soundcard for a second controller for optical drives. Now... Just turn off the computer, and take the "slave" card out, whenever you want to move any type of data. Small or large files, it does not matter.

I think that aproach is the best and most versatile of them all. Personally I will go that route whenever my spindle of burnable CD's are used up.

AlessandroB wrote:

I had a bad experience using CF as a IDE drive on Amiga, Compact flash standard is not 100% IDE compatible and in some situation not workin. i had bad Amiga story about cf... i prefer to use a genuine ide hard drive or a Disk on module directly cinnected on the mainboard.

It can be a lot of issues. The parameters for the filesystem as well. Sometimes it is just the CF card that are too cheap. Personally I have had the biggest issues with CF card adapters for the Amiga's pcmcia port. Buying an SD-Card to CF-Card adaptor, and sticking in a 4gb Kingston SD-Card, solved that issue. Sometimes it is just the CF-IDE adapter that are of low quality. You can buy TrueIDE adapters, and I think they will give better results on an 386/486 machine as well.

Problem is if you want to use the Mac, it adds a bit more complexity then if it was a modern windows PC.

FTP Network is still the essayist as works on any OS and future proof. Yes it takes a bit more to get up and running but you'll save so much more time in the long run and people here will help.
CF or SD to IDE is probably the next best option. It can also have problems setting up, but 1/2 of these are if you want to boot from it. If you have it just as a data drive you'll avoid 1/2 of these.

3rd but not recommended option is burning CD or DVD as most dos machines have one, but probably your newer one wont and you'll to buy CD's to burn

mbbrutman wrote:

I think that networking is the way to go, but that also assumes that a network card is installed. I wouldn't build a machine without a network card, but for somebody who doesn't have one yet you still have to go through that step.

I've heard of some tools a guy wrote for doing stuff like FTP in DOS. Might be handy. 😎

mbbrutman wrote:

Zip disks are another nice solution. Yes, I know about the click of death. If you can find surviving drives that were not affected by that then you have 100MB of storage per removable disk. I have a few parallel port drives for moving around between systems and a SCSI version installed in my Linux machine.

A parallel port hard drive is another reasonable solution. CF cards can also be used with parallel port readers, but the drivers hog a bit of memory.

Put me on the list for serial being another option.

You mean this ? http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/

Actually isn't that mbbrutman who did this ? The URL and his name are quite similar 😀

These are the methods I use.....which depend on the task I'm doing and the generation of PC the vintage one is....

All OS installs are done using reproduced original media of some kind, usually floppies, sometimes CD if I can boot from it. My Pentium can boot from CD from the BIOS, my 486 can with late model Seagate drives with DDO because the DDO prompts for CD boot giving me that capability. My 286 is SCSIso I can boot off any device including CD-ROM, and the Tandy 1000 is strictly 360k DSDD....but with XT-IDE, so I usually preload DOS on it with the 486 then move the HDD carriage (I use mobile racks for my HDD on the Tandy and 486) back to the Tandy with mtcp installed.

For the majority of software on the Tandy, it's pushed from my Windows 10 devices over FTP with the mTCP suite FTPSRV to make the Tandy act as an FTP server. I find it more reliable than networking.

The 286 uses Microsoft LAN Manager 3.0 over TCP/IP with DHCP. I just enable SMB 1 in Win10 and map the drive using the usual method in explorer using account domain admin type tools on my main box to mitigate any security risks usind old SMB to keep it brief.

The 486 uses everything from Windows For Workgroups 3.11 to other ideas and uses native networking over regular TCP/IP over my p2p Workgroup LAN. I use Win10 to push files to the 486. As it requires encrypted passwords to 3rd party SMB users upstream for anything pre Windows 2000.

The Pentium runs Win98SE and has all the same caveats as the 486 but is faster due to having a 100mbps wired connection vs 10mbps my ISA/VLB 486 is limited to.

I use giant ATA-100/133 drives in all but the 286 (8GB+) - the 486 and 586 both use PIO4. The exception is the 286 which has a 3GB SCSI drive in it using an Adaptec host controller. On the 486 and up using Win95 or higher I rip optical media to one of the other partitions using an old copy of virtual CD before I install if I need a CD in the drive to run the game (Diablo, Beachhead, Sims, ETC). Other software is copied over network and left to copy overnight. We're talking gigabytes being pushed to machines from a time when everything was measured in Megabytes.

A new thing I'm testing, probably starting tomorrow, is SATA drives in the 486 using a SATA to PATA converter I nabbed at Fry's while in San Jose. I'm interested to see how SSD and SATA drives over 100GB respond to DDO. I've been using Maxblast for everything non-seagate and it seems to work on everything from a 540MB fujitsuI had in my 286 when it was IDE to the numerous 80GB I've used in my 486. I've never tried over 80GB......could be interesting. This means I can slap an OS on using anything assuming it works out.

Deksor wrote:

You mean this ? http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/

Actually isn't that mbbrutman who did this ? The URL and his name are quite similar 😀

Yes. Their names are indeed oddly similar.

I second network file transfer. The mTCP suite works excellently for this.

dionb wrote:

This is what I'm referring to: https://image.allekabels.nl/image/1082630-0/pci-bracket-compact-flash-slot-voeding-4p-molex-3.5-f […]
Show full quote

This is what I'm referring to:

External slot-plate. Just stick CF in before booting and you're good to go - no screwdrivers or other disassembly required. Need to put files on the CF? Turn PC off, pull it out and hook it up to USB->CF adapter on modern PC. But mtcp FTP is still easier and faster because you don't need to reboot anything.

Exactly what I use for my 286/386/486 setups.

Now I got booted my 486 (AMD DX2/66) using the Windows 98SE start diskette.
However, Windows refuses to install, stating that it needs a processor with at least 66 MHz.
Doh. No easy network stuff 🙁

So I am now transferring configured DOS and a number of utilities from my P3 retro thingy to it, with LL3 using the original serial cable. Lost the parallel one 🙁
That's the easiest way to get the network stuff onto it...
download, extract using Ark, move to samba/nfs space, and then find a way to move it to the "new" build with keeping long filenames intact... now investigating whether I can do that using FreeDOS...

retardware wrote:

Now I got booted my 486 (AMD DX2/66) using the Windows 98SE start diskette.
However, Windows refuses to install, stating that it needs a processor with at least 66 MHz.

Try to start setup with /NM switch. That should bypass CPU detection to allow Windows install on systems that do not meet Microsoft's minimum requirements.

Srandista wrote:

Try to start setup with /NM switch. That should bypass CPU detection to allow Windows install on systems that do not meet Microsoft's minimum requirements.

Excellent, this works!
Thank you very much! 😀

The harddrive for my 486 is parked in a HD caddy installed in a free 5.25" external drive bay. When I need to transfer data I pull the drive and put it in a external USB drive holder connected to a modern machine - then back in the 486 caddy when done. I do it for for basically any amount of data since burning FDs and CDs takes just as much time as swapping out drives.

For moving data between my current systems and my retro systems I use networking for the most part.

a) If it runs windows, it can map and use network drives from my linux based samba server for the most part.
b) if it doesn't run windows, I can use the mTCP utilities and a packet driver to download over FTP to my linux server.

The good thing about using networking as the primary means of data transfer, is that I can chuck XT-IDE as a ROM on the ethernet card and have that handle the hard drives, rather then dealing with 30 year old buggy BIOS's, and the equally bad 30 year old hard drives that haven't had the good judgement to die yet.

I also use floppies (USB floppy drive on my windows 10 system) and CDs to copy drivers and programs/games as well, when I don't feel like using networking.