Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

unterminated.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 272 posts

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#181

Post by flomo »

oneplane wrote: post #110
flomo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's highly unlikely any terminal software would be installed on an old Mac, even if it had a modem. (Although I don't know about Clarisworks.) It was counter to the whole mentality. There was a bootstrapping problem where you needed to get the software which allowed you to download the software, and even the common MacBinary/Stuffit/etc programs did not come with the system.

I found the example where this exact ClarisWorks process was used: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/transfer-applicati... Because serial ports (and modems) were pretty much the default thing to use (besides LocalTalk and AppleTalk) the desktop software usually supported that out of the box, no terminal required. This is also why Fax support was built in, because even then, any other type of peer connectivity…

Good finds everyone! Other than LocalTalk (which was 'normal'), I don't believe the old MacOS had any OOB support for serial transfers. Thus Clarisworks or ZTerm or etc was needed.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#182

Post by NegativeLatency »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #166
NegativeLatency wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but IDK how you'd send them on a mac without the software to do it? Is there even an environment you can program in? Can Applescript on classic macos do serial stuff in any form?

IDK about MacOS, but on Windows 9x/XP, sending bytes via serial was incredibly trivial in C#, Visual C++ or even ols school Visual Basic.[1] Even if you didn't have one of the dozens of already written serial terminal apps, you could write your own pretty easily in one of those languages to push bytes out the serial port, with just a few standard API calls. I doubt MacOS didn't have something similar. Unless of cours…

Didn’t know how to program at the time I was using classic macos but my current understanding (having done some retro programming for fun) is that unless you specifically installed a programming environment there’s no real ability to script or even run commands.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#183

Post by Rinzler89 »

Anarch157a wrote: post #178
Rinzler89 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK about MacOS, but on Windows 9x/XP, sending bytes via serial was incredibly trivial in C#, Visual C++ or even ols school Visual Basic.[1] Even if you didn't have one of the dozens of already written serial terminal apps, you could write your own pretty easily in one of those languages to push bytes out the serial port, with just a few standard API calls. I doubt MacOS didn't have something similar. Unless of cours…

No need for any programming language in Windows 9X, just open a DOS prompt and use 'copy file.txt COM1: /B'. We used that trick back in the DOS days to print raw ASCII files on parallel (LPT1:) or serial (COM1:) devices. I'm willing to bet it still works on Win11.

> I'm willing to bet it still works on Win11.

It might not. A lab I was at in uni still had Windows XP PCs because according to them, that's the last Windows OS that allowed direct serial/paralel port access needed to control the external robotics/CNCs via those old APIs the SW used, since subsequent versions of Windows abstracted away those direct HW API calls that DOS used in the name of security and stability.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#185

Post by flounder3 »

telegtron wrote: post #184

Was it not an option to take out the HD and connect it to a modern computer? It sure had an HD. [0] [0] Macintosh PowerBook Duo 280c: Technical Specifications https://support.apple.com/en-us/112137

On the very first page:

The internal hard drive uses SCSI with an unusual connector. 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.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#186

Post by Felger »

I recovered a post apo novel written like 30 years ago by a friend last year.

Patient : Miniscribe 8425SA 20 MB SCSI hard disk from an Apple Hard Disk 20SC (external SCSI enclosure with a HDD). Hoped the disk was still in working condition after more than a decade stored (HDD was built in '88 and a sticker mentioned a repair in '99), the enclosure power supply was presumed dead (no power on) and the mac itself was shorting mains power in a few little minutes, probably from the screen high voltage converter dying and shorting.

I simply extracted the hard disk from the enclosure. This full height 3.5" disk has an "external" mechanical actuator : a stepper motor visible from outside drives the arm with the head(s) inside the disk, protected by a bellows. It gives a cool sort of a floppy drive sound when random access occurs.

I simply plugged it on a SCSI chain on my vintage Advansys SCSI PCI Card and ribbons.

Read the HFS partition with an old recovery software I could find on the recovery computer, quickly found the files (very simple file system and hierarchy), recovered them on the PC. Encountered just one bad sector.

Then looked the content of the file as raw shaking and ajusted the recovered text format for use with Windows PC/Word from the old word processor software - I think they were Corel Wordperfect files.

Very few correction to make to the raw text. Layout will have to be more thoroughly restored beyond EOL. Mainly accented characters and a few other replacements to do. I thought it would be more of an chore from an vintage apple system and third party software.

Overall, it was far easier than expected. Took me less than 2 hours. But am a ex data recovery guy with some ressources.

Quite pleased the miniscribe acted almost like a charm after 10 years or so of (warm, indoor) storage and not a single power on. Feared the HDD motor's ball bearing were totaly stuck !

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#188

Post by telegtron »

flounder3 wrote: post #185
telegtron wrote: post #184

Was it not an option to take out the HD and connect it to a modern computer? It sure had an HD. [0] [0] Macintosh PowerBook Duo 280c: Technical Specifications https://support.apple.com/en-us/112137

On the very first page: The internal hard drive uses SCSI with an unusual connector. 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.

Oops! I forgot I read that part. You are right.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#189

Post by TacticalCoder »

jtriangle wrote: post #180
kjellsbells wrote: post #159

This feels like a practical exam in information theory, and I love it. "You've got a 32,000 byte file to transmit over a channel of your choice. They all suck in some way. You have a smartphone, a serial port, and a computer. The computer has no compiler, but you can use any of its native facilities. Solutions that require more bytes of input (eg scripts) than are in the file to be transferred are disqualified. There…

Before I ever entertained any sort of soft solution, I would have the drive out and plugged into a XYZ to USB interface. Simple manner of installing hfsprogs mounting the drive, yanking the files you want off, and you're done. The proprietary connector might prove to be a problem, would likely have to bodge your way to victory there, but, mercifully, old stuff tends to work when bodged just fine. Perks of being a har…

I'm a software guy and my first reaction was the same: "Two words: eBay, Linux".

But then it turns out: taking the harddrive out of that Powerbook Duo 280c is kinda sorta a real mess for it requires taking the entire laptop apart (I just looked at an online teardown video of that old Mac laptop).

Now the advantage of eBay+Linux is that it works even if the screen is broken, if the laptop doesn't boot, etc. It works as long as the harddrive still boots.

Re: How to copy a file from a 30-year-old laptop

#190

Post by romwell »

lisper wrote: post #73
qiqitori wrote: post #22

> I try a bunch of different OCR programs, but can't find any that can transcribe the document with 100% accuracy. They often confuse certain letters or numbers (like 0 and C, 9 and 4, 0 and D). Sometimes they omit characters, sometimes they introduce new ones. I try different font sizes and different fonts, but it doesn't matter. I decided to OCR a hex dump from an old computer magazine a while back and fixed this p…

Programming environments were available of course, but none were built-in. The fact that the external floppy doesn't work is the main problem here. I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find.

>I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find.

With the file sizes involved, one could take a picture of the screen showing the hex dump with a smartphone, and then OCR that.

No need to even bother with external hardware.

Post reply on HN