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

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

#91

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by duskwuff »

flomo wrote: post #89
oneplane wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can indeed use xmodem or zmodem, and use a macbinary encoding to transfer any file you want in either direction. Does require you to have something that can receive over serial on the PowerBook. ClarisWorks could definitely do it, but office probably has exactly the same 'receive document' feature. Alternatively, you can use the serial port to 'print' to, and just capture the serial output. It's essentially just…

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.

ClarisWorks had a "communications" module which is effectively a serial terminal, and which supported sending and receiving files. I'm not sure if it internally supported MacBinary, but it'd at least be enough to get files off the system.

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

#93

Post by Rinzler89 »

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.

From what I could Google, that laptop doesn't have a traditional RS-232 serial port but a DIN-8 RS-422 serial port. Still, it's serial, it's standard and very well documented, easy to acquire and easy to hook up.

I'd definitely would have used that instead to transfer data, especially since I could find USB to RS-422 port converters online easy and cheap[1]. I'm not sure why the author didn't try this, or maybe he tried but had no app to serialize file transfers?

Feels like a missing lead the article doesn't touch on.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Converter-Adapter-Supports-Win...

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

#94

Post by jandrese »

Suppafly wrote: post #86
jandrese wrote: post #78

In the picture with the phone cable plugged into the modem port directly next to it appears to be an Ethernet port. I know the blog post says there was "no networking software" installed, but the OS came with file sharing capabilities built in. Someone would have had to gone to effort to remove it. It might even have an old school FTP client.

That picture is of the thinkpad he used to receive the faxes. The mac doesn't have an ethernet port. I believe it would have had appletalk that maybe could have connected to ethernet using an adapter.

Ah, that makes sense.

The problem with the Appletalk to Ethernet adapter is that would definitely need drivers that are unlikely to exist on the Mac.

Given that, then using the serial port with a dumb terminal would be the next best option, but IIRC MacOS didn't ship with a terminal application so there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

What might exist is an Appletalk implementation for the GPIO ports on a Raspberry Pi or similar board, which would let you use the built-in Appletalk file sharing to get stuff on and off of the machine. The retrocomputing scene has to have something like that, it would be extremely useful.

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

#96

Post by mysteria »

Since these are audio recordings an easier hardware approach would be to tap the output of the motherboard's D/A converter right before the speaker amp and capture it with an A/D. You could also tap the speaker wires which should be easier than tapping thin SMD traces, though the signal might have been highpassed before amplication to better support the small laptop speakers.

Of course this means you'll have to disassemble the ancient laptop and all that, and it won't be a bitperfect capture. For voice recordings though the quality should be more than adequate.

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

#97

Post by cesarb »

immibis wrote: post #56
btbuildem wrote: post #46

My first thought was to use the serial port, but perhaps that was unavailable on the recipient hardware? The second, much more entertaining approach, would've been to harken back to the very arcane days of ZX Spectrums and C64s with tape drives... since the old laptop had functional speakers, it may have been possible to write a bit of code that endcoded the binary data to an audio stream, played that over the speake…

a.k.a. a WinModem driver It's funny that we used to all blame WinModem vendors for making WinModems instead of blaming open source for not being able to write DSP code. To be fair, it was a lot younger then.

> It's funny that we used to all blame WinModem vendors for making WinModems instead of blaming open source for not being able to write DSP code.

From what I recall, the main issue was not with writing DSP code; the main issue was (and usually still is) the lack of documentation on the hardware. Knowing how to write DSP code does not help if you don't know how to run it.

With a normal hardware modem, all you needed to know was how to talk with the UART (and these not only were publicly documented, but also were mostly backwards compatible with the original PC UART), and the Hayes command set variant used by the modem (which was also usually publicly documented, and also backwards compatible with ancient modems).

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

#98

Post by Suppafly »

ska wrote: post #88
Suppafly wrote: post #83

I'm not a Mac guy, but it seems like they glossed over all of the normal solutions to intentionally come up with weirdest one possible. Good for them getting the files they needed I guess, but still weird.

The serial ports might have been easier (depending what was on the machine already and what you have on hand) but it's not obvious. The real problem was the lack of functioning floppy drive. Most of the modern "normal solutions" wouldn't help.

I suppose it depends on how fast you needed a solution too, getting an adapter for the hard drive probably would have been the easiest method even if you had to wait a week for one to come from ebay. Likewise, a replacement floppy drive could have been purchased too. Overall OP came up with a workable solution that didn't really require much in the way of purchases, and it might help someone else out in the future, it's just so strange.
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