Tyrone Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 There is plenty advice on how to get data of an old PC. However, I am thinking of using an old laptop to map my megajolt on the fly rather than use the modern laptops we have in the house with Windows 7. So, I need to install the MJ software and maps on to the old laptop. The problem is the old laptop has a floppy drive, no cd and no USB ports. The new laptops obviously have no floppy drives. Could I use a serial/usb cable? I won't be able to install the cable drivers on the old laptop, but will I be able to push the files from the modern laptop on to the old one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 No USB ports? Must be rather ancient. Easiest solution is probably to take the hard drive out of the old laptop, bung it in a IDE/USB caddy and plug that into the new laptop. You can then write the files to it and put it back into the old laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Jonathan Kay Posted October 19, 2012 Member Share Posted October 19, 2012 There used to be lots of utility programs that would mount one PC on another using serial or LAN connections. We used pcAnywhere. Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 19, 2012 Share Posted October 19, 2012 Then you've got the challenge of getting the utility program onto the old laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Jonathan Kay Posted October 19, 2012 Member Share Posted October 19, 2012 Floppies? Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrone Posted October 19, 2012 Author Share Posted October 19, 2012 The COM ports on the modern laptops have mysteriously appeared now, so the old laptop might be unnecessary. I need to set up the serial/USB cable on COM3, it is currently on COM4. Device manager says COM3 is in use. What would be using it, nothing is listed in device manager. If I change the serial/USB to COM3 will that cause conflict elsewhere or stop something working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrone Posted October 19, 2012 Author Share Posted October 19, 2012 The modem was using COM3, I've changed it to COM1 and changed the serial cable to COM3. Just have to see if it all works tomorrow morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Cornford Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 I have a "portable USB floppy disk drive" that I can lend anyone who needs to use floppy discs to transfer files between old/new pc's. blatmail me if you need it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandmaster Flatcap Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 LAN cross-over cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peteb Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Way back in the dark ages of IT, there used to be an application called LapLink. It used a serial or parallel cable between the two PCs and you could (slowly) remote install the application on the 'other' pc via the serial cable. Assuming you don't have Ethernet on at least one of the laptops (so you could use a cross over cable), you could setup a PPP or SLIP connection between them, basically this is the same way dial up Internet worked with modems. Bit fiddly to do but as a last resort it would work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oilyhands Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Null modem cable and cheapo file transfer program. Oily Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 If it doesn't have USB, it's not likely to have a built-in network interface. Laplink or any other file transfer program relies on you getting some software onto the laptop - which if I understand it correctly was the challenge we started with in the first place. You might just get away with "copy filename.exe com1:" on one machine and "copy com1: filename.exe" on the other to do a direct transfer between serial ports with a null modem cable, but I wouldn't be hugely confident that the resulting file would work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peteb Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 You might just get away with "copy filename.exe com1:" on one machine and "copy com1: filename.exe" on the other to do a direct transfer between serial ports with a null modem cable, but I wouldn't be hugely confident that the resulting file would work. Yep- that's exactly what LapLink remote install does to get the executable onto the remote machine. Works ok for a small .exe, but no good for big files! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oilyhands Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 If you set the baud rate low enough and get the handshaking right it should be OK. Oily Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 What happens if the binary executable contains an "end of file" (CTRL-Z) character? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oilyhands Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Transfer program's generally encode the data to avoid that situation. Oily Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davedlr Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 Does it have a PCMCIA slot (5mm x 50mm roughly). I have some PCMCIA adapters that give you USB slots, which you are welcome to try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markc Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 What about sending them to an email account the going to the old laptop and downloading them from the email account ? Or use something like dropbox ? What os is the old laptop using ? MarkC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markc Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 ps What make and model is the old laptop ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 What about sending them to an email account the going to the old laptop and downloading them from the email account ? Or use something like dropbox ? You're assuming it has a network connection. As mentioned before, this is unlikely if it doesn't have USB ports. There are plenty of easy solutions if it has a network connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markc Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 😬 Didnt think of that Roger you may be right. Need the model number so we can work a solution out MarkC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keybaud Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 Quoting Tyrone: There is plenty advice on how to get data of an old PC. However, I am thinking of using an old laptop to map my megajolt on the fly rather than use the modern laptops we have in the house with Windows 7. So, I need to install the MJ software and maps on to the old laptop. The problem is the old laptop has a floppy drive, no cd and no USB ports. The new laptops obviously have no floppy drives. Could I use a serial/usb cable? I won't be able to install the cable drivers on the old laptop, but will I be able to push the files from the modern laptop on to the old one? Bri, i've just bought one of these cables, which will allow a serial device to connect to a USB port; however, I don't know if you can use it to transfer data in your situation. I know I used to transfer data over serial ports, or parrallel ports, and I only got rid of the cables last month, but I can't remember the DOS commands to do it. I also don't know if it would work between a DOS PC and a non-DOS PC. Your simplest bet would be to copy it to floppy, using someone else's PC obviously, but this will depend how big the megajolt software is. You may need to be clever with zip, using it to span disks. The other option is to remove the harddrive and connect it to your PC and transfer it that way. You'll need an adapter to use the IDE connector on the motherboard or something 'cleverer' if you only have SATA on the PC. Finally, is your old laptop up to the minimum spec for megajolt? Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP or later Pentium IV 1GHz 256MB RAM 10 MB Disk space Edited by - keybaud on 25 Oct 2012 18:45:05 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 The other option is to remove the harddrive and connect it to your PC and transfer it that way. That's a good idea (see post 2). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keybaud Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 Quoting Roger Ford: The other option is to remove the harddrive and connect it to your PC and transfer it that way. That's a good idea (see post 2). I'd rather use something like this, so that it's using the correct bus. I have an entrenched hatred of cheap devices that convert from one format to another, hence the serial to USB cable I listed wasn't a £2.50 one, but one that had a decent chip that would do the job properly. Note, that I'm not saying that the enclosure wouldn't work, but the idea of powering the hard drive from the USB port scares me. There's a reason the PSU provides separate 5v and 12v for peripherals and that they don't draw their power from the motherboard's 5v and 12v rails. Edited by - keybaud on 25 Oct 2012 21:03:09 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ford Posted October 26, 2012 Share Posted October 26, 2012 So you think taking power from the IDE bus is better? Hmm, not so sure about that. IF the host PC has an IDE connector (which it won't in the problem as specified, since it's a modern laptop) then that would work. USB is designed to provide power, though admittedly only 500mA. There are other USB enclosures around which either use two USB ports for extra power or even have external power supplies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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