Is a fax implicitly an analog transmission? Or is there a digital data stream somewhere beneath the layer sending the photo that could be used like a modem?
How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
11–20 of 272 posts
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#12Arn't there a serial (COM) port available on that laptop ? It was kind of ubiquitous at those days. This website [1] says there were two of them. Solving the probem with Zmodem would be trivial. The software (terminal) is already there, it seems.
1. https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/specs/mac_p...
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#13I was actually expecting the author to take photos of the old laptop's screen and OCR those. This was far more entertaining. I do wonder though... perhaps it would have been faster to have the larger fonts and let the transfer take 24 minutes. It probably took longer than 24 minutes to write the updated OCR software. But, where's the fun in that?
He says he tried multiple font sizes.
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#14If you can fax I'm sure you can do some zmodem/ymodem.
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#15Very creative and interesting ie 'use whatever tools/knowledge you have' but:
> The internal hard drive uses SCSI with an unusual connector.
This is literally never an issue as old connectors are easily obtainable (in particular 'in this day and age').
> Adapting it didn't seem straightforward, and we weren't confident the old file system (HFS) would be easy to read from a modern system.
Simple search pulled this up. Honestly that reason didn't make any sense to me at all. The other way might be interesting and fun but I don't think this is a reason not to attempt mounting the old file system.
https://www.matthewhughes.co.uk/how-to-mount-hfs-classic-dri...
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#16In my younger years, I had to pull a dBase 2 database off a CP/M desktop into an MS-DOS portable.
I ended up configuring a serial cable, and running PROCOMM on the PC, set 9600/n/8/1 on both ports, then printed from dBase 2 and set PROCOMM to record the session to a file.
It would lose characters if I let it run too long without a pause to write to a floppy, so I would ctrl-s/q on the CP/M side.
I guess nobody else had ever figured out how to do this.
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#17Is a fax implicitly an analog transmission? Or is there a digital data stream somewhere beneath the layer sending the photo that could be used like a modem?
Digital bitmapped images over an analog channel.
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#18Very creative and interesting ie 'use whatever tools/knowledge you have' but: > The internal hard drive uses SCSI with an unusual connector. This is literally never an issue as old connectors are easily obtainable (in particular 'in this day and age'). > Adapting it didn't seem straightforward, and we weren't confident the old file system (HFS) would be easy to read from a modern system. Simple search pulled this up.…
Linux will mount HFS drivers and files like nothing...
This setup it's overcomplicated and hackey, but dumb in the end. You can mount old SCSI drivers with modern adaptors just fine, and Linux/BSD will either mount or extract HFS images with unar (I think) or hfsutils/hfstools.
Or just spawn ymodem/zmodem compatible software (as he used a Fax setup for modem) and the problem would be solved in minutes.
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#19Jeez, no floppy drive on this laptop? How did people install stuff back then? But thanks, this is inspirational :)
Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop
#20DB9 serial to USB Null modem cable + some simple file transfer software would have solved this in minutes.
Since the mac had a built-in modem, you could have used that software to transfer the file via xmodem or ymodem protocol.
I guess this isn't common knowledge any more.