286 computer -need advice

A guy came to me with an old machine that he says he purchased in the late 1980s, although the hard drive seems to have been manufactured in 1991. According to him, he has "historical" documents on the drive that he would like taken off. The hard drive is 21.4MB in size and runs DOS.

The machine has one 3 1/2 and one 5-1/4 drive, and the motherboard has about 8 ISA slots. It has a parrallel port and a serial port, as well as some 15-pin female port. The hard drive has a cable for power, and two other cables which I'm unfamiliar with...that attach to an ISA card, which has a special power cable running to it from the case.

I'm just trying to figure out how to get the data off. I managed to get another 3 1/2 floppy drive hooked up to it in-case the one that was in the machine had failed...but that didn't work. No floppy I put in is being read, and the system just gives me errors.

I perform data-recovery on hard drives, but this one just blows my mind. The drive is an old ST-225. ;_;

KG

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Comments

supertechCETma

My guess is you probably tried to put a High-density floppy into a system that will only support double-density (or single-density). That's why your floppy won't read.

The Seagate ST-225 is an MFM http://www.seagate.com/support/glossary/terms/mfm.html (not IDE). that's why the ISA card. This was a typical setup for the era. It is truly legacy equipment. http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/mfm/st225.html

You will probably have to start digging in the back of the closet to find pieces/parts in order to get a system operational in order to suck data off the drive.

If you can find a system that still has an ISA slot, you might be able to slip in the disk controller and acess it. worth a try.

Will the system boot from the harddrive? If so, you are half way there. Ebay might be a source for some junk or contact me, I've got crap from way back.

PS. if the data is so historical, he certainly hasn't looked at it in a long time either.

wastedtime

Well I got an old 386sx I work with a bit here at home. I ran into the same problem when I first had it but found a null modem cable and a bit of zmodem transfers worked good as long as you keep the speed down. I start loosing frames at about 33kbs. I hope this helps

TheShadow

Ask around and see if anyone has a laplink cable and a copy of laplink. You may still find them in mom and pop stores. Transfers across the parallel port should be reasonably speedy otherwise the null modem cable and xmodem is the best way to go. Unless.... he has windows 3.11 installed on it and a NIC then you could network the two with a crossover cable. Even XP with netbui installed should talk to it. If it is not there it is probably to much of a hassle compared to the null modem path.

KGhaleon

I'll look into one of them and see what I can find. I doubt it has a NIC or modem card of any sort...and they would have to be ISA, and I don't think such a thing as an ISA Nic exists.

I looked...I looked forever. ;_;

KG

supertechCETma

KGhaleon wrote:

... and I don't think such a thing as an ISA Nic exists.

I looked...I looked forever. ;_;

KG

I've got a whole box full (well, several anyway).

KGhaleon

I take that back then, as I just found a bunch of ISA nics

Too bad I don't know how to install drivers and such in dos. <_<;;;
well...he has a really old norton commander file manager. It doesn't mean I don't hate it any less though.

A quick question though: Do I need to download zmodem in order to use it? Because I don't really have the ability to put anything on the disk at the moment. The 3 1/2 doesn't work and I don't have any 5 1/4 disks.

KG