A Tale of some Diskettes
Well it started off as a simple task, get some data, well as most things go, it is never that simple, this the adventure I had getting some data off of some 5.25″ disks.
There are times when clutter is a bad thing, such as a litter box, clutter in there is horrible. Unfortunately, there are times when when my wife and I disagree about it’s definition, bad clutter to me is Oreo cookies cluttering the kitchen. My wife, she thinks extra computers and computer stuff associated with them is bad clutter. So with me wanting to sell these diskettes is really a clutter issue, to make things no so bad I must tell my self it is really about buying a PS3.
Remember when you actually had fun doing computing? When you actually had to do something to get the computer to work. When if you wanted a printer driver, you had to program it. Well found something exciting, when I was looking at ways of getting clutter out of my life, around my office found these relatively old disks, great for older systems, the ones you haven’t wanted to throw away. The ones that bring back the memories of being a geek, when being a geek was actually cool.
Surprisingly, I was about to throw them out when a friend of mine stopped me, by saying, “Wow dude, do you know what you have there?”. Of course, they are my old disks, clutter, he then suggested, these are the ones you want to use for older system, such as Commodore computers, IBM PC’s, 80286, and 86’s in general, and also that I should sell them on eBay. These are worth a fortune and you would be mad just to through them out. Well he has several old computers him self and he may have a point. The disks I’m selling are 5 1/4 size 360k, these are not the ones you want to use when backing up your current system. There are not enough in the world to do that, for anybody, period.
Well, getting the data off of them was actually more work then I thought it would be. Surprisingly finding a computer to read them was quite a chore, I couldn’t find one. I either gave them away or sold them, on eBay, ironically. Sadly my wife didn’t want the clutter in the house. Well, going around to used computer stores, looking for an older system, like an old 286, 386, or even a 486, couldn’t find anything. One store suggested that they could sell me a old pentium 2 and put the 5 1/4 in it. Actually thought about it, then reconsidered. It just wasn’t worth it, my wife would have a cow and I would have to get rid of it eventually. So there was no point. Then when I was about to give all hope, my wife comes through she suggested that I talk to my older brother, he never throws anything out, he has an whole basement to prove it. Well, he had one, yeah…..
I bring it home, it is an old pentium, the ones that weigh at least 50 lb., because of all the old hardware, and he has it loaded to gills with stuff. Old network cards, sounds cards, everything. Well I set it up in my office. I chose not to bring the monitor, that would be more weight then I wanted to carry, I have a flatscreen, it worked just fine. Well I start to read the diskettes, nothing, they are getting errors like crazy. After spending a hour going through a lot of them I was about to give up, throw the whole lot away. The next day, after doing some google searches it hit me, this is an old disk drive and probably the heads are dirty. So after getting out the rubbing alcohol and a q-tip, I cleaned the heads. Tad-a, it worked, the disks started to read and the data looked really good.
Now I start to coping the data off the disks. I create a directory on the hard drive, don’t want to mess up anything on his system, you don’t know when he actually might use it. In this new directory I create a directory, name it uniquely, giving a useful name. Something that will let me know what is on the disk. Then using a dos command, I copy drive B to this directory. Great it work. Data integrity is great, all looks good. I do another disk. Do the same thing. Ok, then another. Then I look over, I have a whole pile to do. This sucks, this will take forever. This is not going to be fun, so why not write a batch file to do this. Not a good idea, batch programming sucks. You can’t do anything with it. So then I remember I have turbo pascal. I load that baby on. I’m good to go. However, I forgot a lot of my turbo pascal programming, it has been over 10 years since I touched it. Luckily for me I had an old turbo pascal book, because, the manuals that came with it are gone, they got tossed, again it was a clutter issue. Ok bygones, I quickly got up to speed on pascal, an evening, and I got a little program written that copies the disks from the B drive, to a Directory it names and creates. Also it prompts you for a starting number so that it can be unique, the last thing I want to do is copy everything over to the same directory overwriting very thing I did. Which I did earlier. We are good to go, I copy everything over it takes hardly any time.
All the data is saved on the hard drive, GREAT! Now I have to get them off the computer, I hook up the network, connect it to my router, this should be quick. No connect. Great, I need to configure Windows 95 tcp/ip. Oh great it doesn’t have networking, that module was not loaded. And my version of 95 got tossed too, again the clutter issue. Then I tried using a live version of Linux, the computer wouldn’t boot off of the cd-rom. I also thought of burn diskette data on the the Cd-Rom, couldn’t it was a reader only. Then I started to look for a usb port. Nothing, this computer was built before USB’s where even an idea, wonderful.
I have an old hard drive, copy the contents from the hard drive over to it. Then I can get an IDE Enclosure, copy it over to my new computer. Got the contents over to my hard drive. I started to look for an enclosure, found some, but would have to buy it. For some reason, it was not worth it to me to buy an enclosure for a 500 meg hard drive. Not when USB drive hold lots more then that. So then I remember a friend of mine told me about his enclosure and was willing to let me use it.
The big day, we are going to copy the data over. He came over, and we got his old drive out of there and put mine into the enclosure case. I hook it up to my computer, look to see if the system recognized the new hard drive, still looking, the led is displaying red, not working. The computer doesn’t see it. Great, so we decide to test to see if it is the enclosure, we put his old hard drive back in and hook it up the my computer, it works. Put my hard drive in, again not working. Oh wonderful, his hard drive works but mine doesn’t, now what. If only I had my data on his hard drive it would be a breeze to copy it over to the computer. Then he suggested, why not copy the data over from that my hard drive over to his hard drive and we can copy that over to my computer. BRILLIANT, I quickly copy the data over, and bam it is on my mac.
All this time, I’m telling people what I’m doing, one friend is an accountant, she is asking why am I doing this. I’m telling her so I can sell these disks on eBay. She then starts to do some mental calculations, then asks, again why am i doing this. I tell her, because, and try to leave it at that. So she asks me some other questions about what I’m doing, then finally frustrated, just says good luck. I don’t think she is getting why am I trying to copy old Dos programs on to my Mac. I don’t think my wife is getting it either. However, my computer friends they somewhat get it. History, this is data from the past and I want to keep it and remember it. Also they have some old games and programs I don’t’ want to lose.
