This is a very old video at this point that I'm releasing because it's done and I needed something to cover the time while I'm moving. I said I would be uploading the files from this backup when I release the video but I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I still have the files but I need to really go through them to make sure they don't contain any personal info.
You'll not find any of my personal info on there. Just don't get into my AOL account if it has my password buffered, lol. TRUE STORY: Last time I was on AOL with that DTR-1, I found my future wife via AOL's "Love Connection" forum. We just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.
PS. That is a massive 40 megabyte hard drive in that DTR-1. How they managed to stuff such an incredible amount of storage in a PC that small is just mind blowing.
Ah good to know! I wanted to be sure since it is someone else's computer. I've encountered pretty much everything on people's computers so I make it a habit to sanitize them if I image them. I do have the floppy drive with it again now, this video was recorded nearly 2 years ago now but I wasn't thrilled with all the twists in it. I wish I had the drive on hand for this video because it would have been a lot easier to do, but it is back together now. If I remember right it was packed up with my Atari computer stuff after LTX and just showed up at random one day while looking in my storage.
At the time, Zip drives were considered more reliable and "future-proof" than LS120. Zip drives did indeed outlast (in the market at least) the LS120, probably because they came along first. I liked the LS120 because they were built into the PC and they were compatible with 1.44mb disks.. they seemed like a much more elegant solution.
Still have 2 zip drives, one SCSI, and the parallel version, which was used with a HP CD writer that also used the parallel port, and they actually worked together. Not that you wanted to burn a CD using the Zip drive as source, first generation CD writer, capable of writing at both 1x and 2x speed, but not fast enough over parallel port connection, unless it was an EPP port, to do 2x reliably. Made many a Verbatim coaster with that, till I finally took it apart, and placed the IDE drive it contained into the PC case, and used a spare IDE cable to connect it. Other Zip drive was running perfectly using SCSI, with the old reliable Adaptec card, which also had internal to the case a pair of SCSI Deathstar drives, each with a whole 1G of space on them. Outside there was the Zip drive, and a HP scanner, with the plug in terminator on the scanner, as it did not have an internal terminator, that the Zip drive did have. Had to be that way because cable lengths. Miss that HP scanner, true 1200DPI scan, even though it was slower than a wet weekend, but it gave great image range, though it was sadly tossed when the lamps went EOL, and no longer calibrated, and HP wanted more than the cost of the machine for new lamp assemblies. Unlike the fellow Arcus scanner, where I regularly would do lamp changes, using the correct Arcus lamps, which were very cheap, and which simply clipped in to place, also allowing you to clean and polish the glass surfaces as well. Many hours of doing dust spot removal, and minor touch ups of the scanned 8x10 negatives, before they went to the real graphic designer, to have her do her magic on them. Then printed on the Tektronix Phasor 340 printer as proof, before going off to the print house on Zip disk. I will bet that there are still print houses that have a single computer around, with a Zip drive in it, and a spare or three, because some of the old archive jobs are still on Zip disk.
I had both, the Zip first and replaced it with the LS120 because of the advantages it had over Zip, which in my usage profile outweighted the portability of a Zip drive.
Back in the day we used to use Kermit and a null modem cable to transfer files. Basically you only needed pins, 2, 3, 7 and 20 connected. Just swap 2 and 3 (transmit and receive) on one end.
Did you know that Norton Commander has interlnk type functionality, but like Laplink it can use null modem and parallel cables. That's how friends and I used to copy stuff between machines in the early 90s. I believe it's included all the way back to V3, possibly earlier. Also, NC could have done that copy much more efficiently and easily. Also, if you are interested I may have a laplink cable set I can send you to have, I believe I have an extra set somewhere.
@@ZXRulezzz You could do this on any computer you had, provided you could run Debug, and then copy over a small couple of dozen byte machine code instructions, that would set the serial port up to receive data at 9600Baud, and then wait for data, write it into memory, and when the correct number of characters had been received, branch over to that new program to run the bigger faster bootstrap program, that then was installed on the machine. Doable, and I did use it once or twice with machines that had failed or no floppy drives.
@@SeanBZA I mean sure, "toggling it in" is always an option, but at this point it's just a matter of skill and patience, I guess :) When I had a dead floppy drive on my Toshiba 486 laptop (belt perished), I found a pinout and made an external floppy drive cable, which I hooked to HxC floppy emulator I already had, and could get files going back and forth that way. Later I managed to replace the floppy drive for a more modern one with direct drive spindle, which required to make a new ribbon cable also, since original one, while electrically compatible, was just a tad too short. But at that point that wasn't really necessary, as I used the emulator to get PCMCIA disk drivers going and could use CF cards. (all that said, my goal wasn't to do a backup, but to do a full wipe and reinstall, since the drive was already backed up through USB-PATA adapter outside of the laptop) I'm way more patient with a soldering iron than bootstrapping a PC-compatible, and I wanted to get that drive working just because :) I wouldn't mind figuring out eventually how to do the latter, but it would be an absolute last resort for me, lol
I found a document on a BBS back in the day on how to make a Laplink cable, and chopped up a parallel cable to copy files around with Interlink. Definitely faster than serial, but still painfully slow and was of limited use.
Laplink would also run as a server using a modem, connected to a phone line. Dial in, and get connected immediately, no user name, no password. Just have to use a random phone number, and hope security by obscurity would work for you. Had that years ago for IT support to call in after business hours if needed, but the 28800 modem was only ever powered on when this was going to occur. In the days Internet was only available as a dial up connection, pre DSL. You can bet there was an incentive for support to occur after hours, when call costs were cheaper, and the incumbent Telco had a special cost package for after hours calls to be billed at fixed rate, irrespective of duration during the low peak times. I would go online Friday 7PM, and turn off the modem Monday morning at 6H30, getting the best value on the 33600 connection.
True! And in ECP mode, if configured right, the parallel zip drives weren't that bad! Did a speed comparison test recently, and the parallel drive did fairly well.
I'd have just used Norton Commander's Commander Link over serial, transferred my coworker's data from his first ever laptop. Used that with Total Commander back in early 2000s too, although through parallel. This could take a while but it I'm pretty sure it'd have taken less than the whole ordeal you went through.
This sums up any vintage PC project. Ambitious idea with a plan at the start, but then it just blows apart. Feel your pain but was still good to watch. As I learned something new as well about the built in file transfer system.
I like these videos that don't turn out as expected, because you set off to do something seemingly simple, but end up taking a whole other route due to unforeseen circumstances, missing files and catch-22's... I'm dabbling with retro computing myself and I'm constantly derouted by things because ancient tools and lying usb mice that powr up on PS/2 but don't work derailed a lot of things to the point of me getting another machine just to see if I was crazy or not...
That LTP Zip drive was almost like flash drive for my father. Great capacity for removable drive with ability to connect to anything on market. It was invaluable for freelance system administrator...
Yeah, I think zip disks were more popular with small and medium businesses since they were more affordable than magneto optical and (initially) CD-R. And until the CD-R drives were released that could recover from a buffer underrun, they were easier to use and more reliable. We used them at school in the mid-late 90s for our multimedia projects. I even bought a zip drive at one stage, but we used Macs at school for multimedia so I don't remember how that worked. I have no idea what happened to the drive or my disks though. The drive probably died and I probably just threw it and the disks out. Which is a shame, because as you've discovered they can be a handy last resort for getting files on/off old machines.
Last time I played around with Windows 3.11, I just copied files over standard SMB (well, samba) network share. It still can connect to modern systems.
The only time I have ever used ZIP disks was at a career training center that I went to. The only class there that used them was an offset printing class. We made the design on a modern computer, put it on a ZIP disk and then moved that to the older computers in the dark room to print the printing plate.
Zip Disk was a cool idea, but optical drives came along at almost the same time and since they're fully backwards compatible you almost always got more backup storage per buck with whatever the specific optical disks were.
Oh hey, cool! I never knew about that interlnk/intersrv dealiebob! I guess Microsoft was gunning to "embrace. extend. extinguish" laplink, too,. Did they ever remake pcAnywhere in their own image?
I see a Realistic SA-10 on the shelf. I also have that mixer you've got under the monitor stand, although I can't remember the model... 3 mic + 2 line/phono...
Thank you for just using xcopy, I had a flashback to trying to get the backup commands in the various versions of DOS to work together. Backups made under each version couldn't be restored in the newer updated version, totally ruining the idea of backups!
I wonder if you could use a Nokia N91 HDD to swap a defunct HDD on these. It's smaller, so a lot of tech that can convert A to B can be fitted inside the same space.
Frankly I'm astonished that any Zip disks are still working. I had external and internal drives on a number of machines and never had any problem with them. But the disks. Well they made a very distinctive click when they failed and as far as I could tell that was always unrecoverable. Ditched the lot of them.
13:59 I see what you did to make the screen readable while you tried to find the time to repair the pen… This video came at a nice time for me! I found an IBM ThinkPad 240 that is dead, had lots of magnesium oxide inside the chassis (from the magnesium coating on the inside), an LCD damaged due to moisture, and I attempted to plug its keyboard into my working Japanese version unit only to find out that the membrane may be damaged. Unlike the working unit I have that was originally purchased in Japan, this unit that was originally purchased in Singapore does still have its hard drive AND the caddy, so I'm going to make an image of the hard drive in Clonezilla Live (and maybe also Disk2VHD) on a spare PC before I attempt to boot it in my Japanese device. I will also need to take the palmrests off of both of them to see if the battery leaked on the Singaporean unit and if it's going to leak on the Japanese unit. I might sell the Singaporean unit for parts later on, or keep it for a crazy idea I had which would've been to stuff the guts of a ThinkPad X1 Nano inside the ThinkPad 240 chassis and somehow make it work.
This is what I did with my Thinkpad 730T... it came with a 105MB PCMCIA drive but I replaced it with a CF card in a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter. No more spinning!
@@TechTangents According to that article, it should have either an IDE or PC Card interface. Both of which are pretty standard. It's possible though that building/buying an adapter might be required to adapt the physical connector and pass the electrical signals, this I have no idea.
Is there a best way to image a drive from DOS? I've got an ST-157A in a 286 that I recently got and I want to back that up using my go-to GNU ddrescue but the USB IDE interface I have doesn't like the drive for some reason (it does spin up and have activity), and since it's a 286, that means both no Linux AND no djgpp. (Of course, I need to figure out why it won't boot from any drive, or even recognize media in the floppy drives, or notice the IDE card is there... It's a Packard Bell Legend I (Legend 1?), which frustratingly has no preserved documentation online (which also makes me uncomfortable trying to remove the drive from the case). There is a UA-cam video of someone repairing a dead PSU in theirs; I need to see if they have the same problem as I do after that repair.) I think either Adrian Black or NCommander had some quick C program that used the BIOS?
@@andlabs I'm not aware of such a software that is 286 compatible. That doesn't mean it doesn't exists though. Sounds to me you'll need to find workable hardware, something that is 386 or newer and supports IDE to image that drive.
I used to use Interlnk and Intersvr in the 90's when I had a 386sx40 and we didn't have networking. Using it over Parallel Port is *FAR* faster, as the port would transmit/receive far faster than the serial port. The cables actually were pretty common back in the day. It was slower than MFM drive speeds, but it was fast enough that at the time you technically could run Doom from one machine onto another and it wasn't unusuably slow like it was over serial.
Last year I have the same backup problem with an industrial pc without the dos folder, only with the command.com and even without vga. The solution was not interlink but to use only the copy command that can send and receive files over the com port and copy all the files over serial.
Thanks a lot for the great video about file transfer from your Dauphin DTR-1. I also own one and have thought of how to use the Ethernet port to copy files to another computer. After seeing your video now I know 😊 It could be awesome if the Kittyhawk drive could be replaced by something more up to date like a CF-card. Maybe an idea for a new video? 😉 Keep up the good work 👍
19:16 “Never delete anything while you’re doing data backup.” lol spoken by a man with experience, was thinking about exactly this when I was migrating between phones earlier this week. I know this is an older video but on the topic of making a virtualized version of that install: maybe nowadays 86Box would be a good approach?
(Yes I know the video's old but...) You couldn't just pull the HDD? Also: what connector does it use? I may have something for you if it's 44pin and the BIOS isn't stupid.
Just looked up those drives -- LORD that is weird. CompactFlash microdrive with a 44pin (+4pin jumper) IDE connector hanging off the side just like a 2.5in laptop drive. I have something that will work if the Dauphin can work with virtual geometries but it's the wrong gender of connector! so I'll have to get an adapter (which is not hard and I need to do that anyways for myself TBH lol). Want some old 44pin IDE thin client DiskOnModules? :D
Back in 1994 when I worked in a PC clone shop, we loaded all of our machines via Laplink using a parallel port cable. 500k baud was blazing fast for DOS machines back in the day, and it didn't require us to add a network card or anything else super screwy. It worked over serial as well, and we used that on occasion when repairing older systems that have no parallel port. We all had boot disks that we used to boot the system, copy the standard DOS configuration, and then scan for viruses. That worked great until we got infected by a customer's system with a virus that was able to evade our DOS based AV ... Had to create new boot disks with a new AV engine, and clean every system we had infected ... ahh, good times.
Would using something that does a sector-by-sector backup be better? That way things that are not files (like the boot sector) would also be preserved and the chances would be higher for someone to revive such a thing with an SD card to ide adapter for example...
Ghost was the first thing that came to mind for doing a really proper backup, which allows for resizing drives and other tricks. There must be something simpler out there that can do sector-level cloning. I used LapLink with good success for installing a bunch of systems back as my first summer job as a teen, though I think that does file-level copying (though that's usually fine as long as it grabs all of the hidden/system files -- may just need to use a boot disk to run "sys" and maybe "fdisk /mbr" on the drive to make it bootable after
So i bought few nos and used kittyhawk drives and one of them has special test software for this tablet unit, i have yet to back it up but if i do where should i upload it for people?
Why not just run a FTP client on Windows 3.11? Wouldnt its install have a TCP/IP driver. I remember running FTP clients on Windoes 3.11. Also, you should use /e instead of /s. Also, ever iteration of Zip drives with larger sizes, can read the older drives formats.
@@nneeerrrd It must really, really suck to be you and have that attitude. I always kind of feel sorry for the people like you, who apparently have so many issues it bleeds over into being rude to others for no reason. So what he isn't from "that era." Funny part is that more people that aren't "from that era" are doing more to preserve this stuff and make content about it than the people that are from "that era." Let's see your videos about this stuff....oh wait.....your channel is empty. I am from that "era" and I am thrilled to see so many people who weren't take an interest in this old junk that normally would have been landfilled by now. If you don't like this man's content - you should feel free to just f*ck right off to somewhere else so the rest of us don't have to be subject to your nonsense that serves zero purpose other than illustrate what a shitbird of a human you are being. The only "lamer" here is you and your use of "fanboi" to justify your pointless and failed view.
Gawd I had one of these back in the day. They were blown out for $99, I think through the DAK catalog. It was so awfully slow, that it was almost unusable. Now I wish I'd kept it, of course. ;) BTW, you didn't link LGR's video like you said you would in the video (not that I couldn't find it).
Would it not be possible to dump the BIOS and VGA ROM from the device and put together a PCem configuration that could run the unmodified backup files?
Back in the days I used Norton Commander v4 to transfer files between computers via a parallel cable - super easy! I think you could set it to work over the serial port as well.
Just saying, I use zip drives a lot. They work on IDE, SCSI, USB and LPT ports and almost every OS has drivers for it. The Zip 250 can both read and format the Zip 100 series disks. Great format and it has saved the day many times working on both Wintel & Mac Systems ;)
Almost every one of my retro computers has a ZIP drive, plus a couple external. They’re great! Need to track down the one I used back in the 90s so I can have a parallel version on hand too. :-)
Can the HDD in these be replaced with one of those right angle 44pin Apacer DOMs used a 44pin female to male adapter or would the pinout be somehow flipped.
It's apparently a MicroDrive, which has the same form factor as a Compact Flash card. An old 128mb card would work well here, the software is a few megabytes in size and some DOS boards have issues with 1GB+ drives
No the kittyhawk drives are much different than microdrives they're like the shaped of a 3.5in hdd of the era scaled down to 1.3in that have a 44pin connector off to the side of the drive.
anyone know if there is an archive for dauphins other computers? ive got a pair of 1050's and im not sure if either is still on its stock operating sstem or if they have some special drivers they wouldnt work right without, but for now both have working hard drives that do boot at least some of the time
back then these type of computers were unicorns!! nowadays these type of computers(modern tablets) are EVERYWHERE! everyone and their grandmother has one! 😁
I ran my download section for my BBS off rotating ZIP disks because CD drives and disks in 1996 were even more expensive, but hey, back then, it worked, sorta 👍🏻
You should get a copy of one of the BSDs or old Linux's running on that tablet, and DD the hdd over to your zip disk. It would be interesting to run a recovery tool on the drive image to see what might be lurking "deleted" but still around. EDIT: Oh ... lol I finished the video... lol perhaps snooping is not what you want to do :P
Interlink/Interserver were quite fast on serial, if use MODE COM1:115200,N,8,1,P As null-modem cable I often used as quick-and-dirty solution a regular 3 wires power cable (I used max 2m cable length); it is thick enough to slide it on the com port pins, as follow: pin 2 to pin 3, pin 3 to pin 2, pin 5 to pin 5 for a 9 pin COM port connector. Not used DTR, DTS, CTS CTR pins, only TxD, RxD and GND As a better alternative, use Norton Commander 5+ as it have a built in Link command (that can be used to copy NC on the slave computer) with added bonus of the dual panel file manager for browsing/ transferring files. Or, if you like it better, use its built in Terminal.
I was going to see if you could use a USB Zip 750 drive as a better way to transfer files from/to Zip disks with a newer computer (I had one that was still sealed in it's bag), but going through ALL my Zip-disks (100MB and 750MB disks), it seems like NONE of my Zip disks and/or drives are working anymore; Icouldn't read disks in the 750 USB, a 250mb UltraBay drive, IDE 100mb, or even parallel port 100mb drives (that's on Fedora 34, MSWin10 and MSWin 2000). I think at this point I may just throw out the whole batch, drives and disks, since I don't need any more broken junk in my house.
Yup. Zip drives are some kind of SCSI over parallel port. I had one back in the day, and it got hit hard by the "click of death". So I personally don't trust zip drives any further than I can throw 'em, which is a stupid saying, because I think I could wing one of those fuckers pretty far.... in fact, I think I *HAVE* done so in the past.
I'd imagine it'd be rather easy to send a Zip drive flying a rather considerable distance. Doubly so if there are still cables attached. (Let's just say that, while I've never dealt with dying Zip drives, there is an old FDD on the roof of a nearby pawn shop that got tossed along with the damaged FDD cable when the drive died and killed the mainboard in the process. Didn't think it'd go that far, expected it to crash down into the street. As far as I know, it's still up there. Never bothered to see if I could find out.)
i can't believe you didn't consider minicom and zmodem over serial null :3 but i guess you would have to have all of that business on the tablet as well. :P
Assuming the micro drive is going to fail soon anyway, why not just pull it out and read the data with an adapter and put a DOM or similar in its place? I appreciate it would make for a less interesting video.
Lol yes, it was your fault for not having the slash in there... you said "copy all files on the c-drives current working path" not "copy all file on the c-drives root" :P
At 8:06 I mention that I need to edit the display's colors in the video to make it more visible on camera. If you want to see what that entails I have a video on my second channel all about that: ua-cam.com/video/CqOoY-o-j-Q/v-deo.html
@@andrewlittleboy8532 Maybe clonezilla looks a little intimidating at first glance, but it is really really easy to use and very intuitive with lots of options !
This is a very old video at this point that I'm releasing because it's done and I needed something to cover the time while I'm moving. I said I would be uploading the files from this backup when I release the video but I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I still have the files but I need to really go through them to make sure they don't contain any personal info.
You'll not find any of my personal info on there. Just don't get into my AOL account if it has my password buffered, lol. TRUE STORY: Last time I was on AOL with that DTR-1, I found my future wife via AOL's "Love Connection" forum. We just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.
PS. That is a massive 40 megabyte hard drive in that DTR-1. How they managed to stuff such an incredible amount of storage in a PC that small is just mind blowing.
PPS. I can email you a photo of the subject floppy drive if that would help.
Ah good to know! I wanted to be sure since it is someone else's computer. I've encountered pretty much everything on people's computers so I make it a habit to sanitize them if I image them.
I do have the floppy drive with it again now, this video was recorded nearly 2 years ago now but I wasn't thrilled with all the twists in it. I wish I had the drive on hand for this video because it would have been a lot easier to do, but it is back together now. If I remember right it was packed up with my Atari computer stuff after LTX and just showed up at random one day while looking in my storage.
@@TechTangents loving that keyboard.
At the time, Zip drives were considered more reliable and "future-proof" than LS120. Zip drives did indeed outlast (in the market at least) the LS120, probably because they came along first. I liked the LS120 because they were built into the PC and they were compatible with 1.44mb disks.. they seemed like a much more elegant solution.
Still have 2 zip drives, one SCSI, and the parallel version, which was used with a HP CD writer that also used the parallel port, and they actually worked together. Not that you wanted to burn a CD using the Zip drive as source, first generation CD writer, capable of writing at both 1x and 2x speed, but not fast enough over parallel port connection, unless it was an EPP port, to do 2x reliably. Made many a Verbatim coaster with that, till I finally took it apart, and placed the IDE drive it contained into the PC case, and used a spare IDE cable to connect it.
Other Zip drive was running perfectly using SCSI, with the old reliable Adaptec card, which also had internal to the case a pair of SCSI Deathstar drives, each with a whole 1G of space on them. Outside there was the Zip drive, and a HP scanner, with the plug in terminator on the scanner, as it did not have an internal terminator, that the Zip drive did have. Had to be that way because cable lengths.
Miss that HP scanner, true 1200DPI scan, even though it was slower than a wet weekend, but it gave great image range, though it was sadly tossed when the lamps went EOL, and no longer calibrated, and HP wanted more than the cost of the machine for new lamp assemblies. Unlike the fellow Arcus scanner, where I regularly would do lamp changes, using the correct Arcus lamps, which were very cheap, and which simply clipped in to place, also allowing you to clean and polish the glass surfaces as well.
Many hours of doing dust spot removal, and minor touch ups of the scanned 8x10 negatives, before they went to the real graphic designer, to have her do her magic on them. Then printed on the Tektronix Phasor 340 printer as proof, before going off to the print house on Zip disk.
I will bet that there are still print houses that have a single computer around, with a Zip drive in it, and a spare or three, because some of the old archive jobs are still on Zip disk.
I had both, the Zip first and replaced it with the LS120 because of the advantages it had over Zip, which in my usage profile outweighted the portability of a Zip drive.
Even though you weren't happy with how it turned out, it's still pretty interesting
Back in the day we used to use Kermit and a null modem cable to transfer files. Basically you only needed pins, 2, 3, 7 and 20 connected. Just swap 2 and 3 (transmit and receive) on one end.
I used to do the same with Zmodem. Never knew what was the best, but it begins with Z, so it must be best.
Obviously you'd need to use the proper equivalent pins on a 9-pin serial port. 😉
That DOS 6 was clearly crippled. PC DOS has Interlnk from 5.02 onward and MS-DOS from 6.0 onward.
love zip disk coming in clutch at the last second
Did you know that Norton Commander has interlnk type functionality, but like Laplink it can use null modem and parallel cables. That's how friends and I used to copy stuff between machines in the early 90s. I believe it's included all the way back to V3, possibly earlier. Also, NC could have done that copy much more efficiently and easily.
Also, if you are interested I may have a laplink cable set I can send you to have, I believe I have an extra set somewhere.
Windows Commander up to version 5 also had the feature, but you had to copy over the DOS "client" program to other computer first somehow.
@@ZXRulezzz You could do this on any computer you had, provided you could run Debug, and then copy over a small couple of dozen byte machine code instructions, that would set the serial port up to receive data at 9600Baud, and then wait for data, write it into memory, and when the correct number of characters had been received, branch over to that new program to run the bigger faster bootstrap program, that then was installed on the machine. Doable, and I did use it once or twice with machines that had failed or no floppy drives.
@@SeanBZA I mean sure, "toggling it in" is always an option, but at this point it's just a matter of skill and patience, I guess :)
When I had a dead floppy drive on my Toshiba 486 laptop (belt perished), I found a pinout and made an external floppy drive cable, which I hooked to HxC floppy emulator I already had, and could get files going back and forth that way.
Later I managed to replace the floppy drive for a more modern one with direct drive spindle, which required to make a new ribbon cable also, since original one, while electrically compatible, was just a tad too short.
But at that point that wasn't really necessary, as I used the emulator to get PCMCIA disk drivers going and could use CF cards.
(all that said, my goal wasn't to do a backup, but to do a full wipe and reinstall, since the drive was already backed up through USB-PATA adapter outside of the laptop)
I'm way more patient with a soldering iron than bootstrapping a PC-compatible, and I wanted to get that drive working just because :)
I wouldn't mind figuring out eventually how to do the latter, but it would be an absolute last resort for me, lol
It's interesting to see comments from 1 year ago
Yeah. What's up with that?
Edit... I read the pinned comment.
I found a document on a BBS back in the day on how to make a Laplink cable, and chopped up a parallel cable to copy files around with Interlink. Definitely faster than serial, but still painfully slow and was of limited use.
Laplink would also run as a server using a modem, connected to a phone line. Dial in, and get connected immediately, no user name, no password. Just have to use a random phone number, and hope security by obscurity would work for you. Had that years ago for IT support to call in after business hours if needed, but the 28800 modem was only ever powered on when this was going to occur. In the days Internet was only available as a dial up connection, pre DSL. You can bet there was an incentive for support to occur after hours, when call costs were cheaper, and the incumbent Telco had a special cost package for after hours calls to be billed at fixed rate, irrespective of duration during the low peak times. I would go online Friday 7PM, and turn off the modem Monday morning at 6H30, getting the best value on the 33600 connection.
Iomega ZIPs were a bit flimsy, but the later drives were COMBINED SCSI and Parallel - making them cool..
True! And in ECP mode, if configured right, the parallel zip drives weren't that bad! Did a speed comparison test recently, and the parallel drive did fairly well.
It appears your IDE 250 drive was hooked up after all, as guest found it.
That was my thought as well! "M:" as the 250, "O:" as the 100...
I'd have just used Norton Commander's Commander Link over serial, transferred my coworker's data from his first ever laptop. Used that with Total Commander back in early 2000s too, although through parallel. This could take a while but it I'm pretty sure it'd have taken less than the whole ordeal you went through.
This sums up any vintage PC project. Ambitious idea with a plan at the start, but then it just blows apart. Feel your pain but was still good to watch. As I learned something new as well about the built in file transfer system.
Loved my old zip disk. Going from 1MB to 20MB was somthing special back then
I like these videos that don't turn out as expected, because you set off to do something seemingly simple, but end up taking a whole other route due to unforeseen circumstances, missing files and catch-22's... I'm dabbling with retro computing myself and I'm constantly derouted by things because ancient tools and lying usb mice that powr up on PS/2 but don't work derailed a lot of things to the point of me getting another machine just to see if I was crazy or not...
Zip disks for their time period were really helpful
That LTP Zip drive was almost like flash drive for my father. Great capacity for removable drive with ability to connect to anything on market. It was invaluable for freelance system administrator...
Glad you finally published this one here. It was a good video. Enjoyed.
Yeah, I think zip disks were more popular with small and medium businesses since they were more affordable than magneto optical and (initially) CD-R. And until the CD-R drives were released that could recover from a buffer underrun, they were easier to use and more reliable.
We used them at school in the mid-late 90s for our multimedia projects. I even bought a zip drive at one stage, but we used Macs at school for multimedia so I don't remember how that worked. I have no idea what happened to the drive or my disks though. The drive probably died and I probably just threw it and the disks out. Which is a shame, because as you've discovered they can be a handy last resort for getting files on/off old machines.
Last time I played around with Windows 3.11, I just copied files over standard SMB (well, samba) network share. It still can connect to modern systems.
That’s what I was wondering as well, pretty easy to set up.
Indeed! As long as you have SMB1 enabled in that OS, you are all set. I use a Raspberry Pi with SMB1 enabled to share files with my retro PCs.
The only time I have ever used ZIP disks was at a career training center that I went to.
The only class there that used them was an offset printing class.
We made the design on a modern computer, put it on a ZIP disk and then moved that to the older computers in the dark room to print the printing plate.
Zip Disk was a cool idea, but optical drives came along at almost the same time and since they're fully backwards compatible you almost always got more backup storage per buck with whatever the specific optical disks were.
Norton Commander did have a support for a serial link...
DTR-1 is not a 386 its a 486SLC by cyrix I believe (used to have a dtr-2)
Oh hey, cool! I never knew about that interlnk/intersrv dealiebob! I guess Microsoft was gunning to "embrace. extend. extinguish" laplink, too,. Did they ever remake pcAnywhere in their own image?
I see a Realistic SA-10 on the shelf.
I also have that mixer you've got under the monitor stand, although I can't remember the model... 3 mic + 2 line/phono...
Thank you for just using xcopy, I had a flashback to trying to get the backup commands in the various versions of DOS to work together. Backups made under each version couldn't be restored in the newer updated version, totally ruining the idea of backups!
I wonder if you could use a Nokia N91 HDD to swap a defunct HDD on these. It's smaller, so a lot of tech that can convert A to B can be fitted inside the same space.
It's showing both drives because your internal zip drive is probably hooked up and you installed the drivers by running guest
Frankly I'm astonished that any Zip disks are still working. I had external and internal drives on a number of machines and never had any problem with them. But the disks. Well they made a very distinctive click when they failed and as far as I could tell that was always unrecoverable. Ditched the lot of them.
13:59 I see what you did to make the screen readable while you tried to find the time to repair the pen…
This video came at a nice time for me! I found an IBM ThinkPad 240 that is dead, had lots of magnesium oxide inside the chassis (from the magnesium coating on the inside), an LCD damaged due to moisture, and I attempted to plug its keyboard into my working Japanese version unit only to find out that the membrane may be damaged. Unlike the working unit I have that was originally purchased in Japan, this unit that was originally purchased in Singapore does still have its hard drive AND the caddy, so I'm going to make an image of the hard drive in Clonezilla Live (and maybe also Disk2VHD) on a spare PC before I attempt to boot it in my Japanese device. I will also need to take the palmrests off of both of them to see if the battery leaked on the Singaporean unit and if it's going to leak on the Japanese unit.
I might sell the Singaporean unit for parts later on, or keep it for a crazy idea I had which would've been to stuff the guts of a ThinkPad X1 Nano inside the ThinkPad 240 chassis and somehow make it work.
Wonder if a CF to 44pin ide would behave in it.
This is what I did with my Thinkpad 730T... it came with a 105MB PCMCIA drive but I replaced it with a CF card in a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter. No more spinning!
Shouldn't you be imaging the drive instead of copying the files from it?
This uses a Kittyhawk Microdrive which has a unique interface that I can't connect to another computer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Kittyhawk_microdrive
@@TechTangents According to that article, it should have either an IDE or PC Card interface. Both of which are pretty standard.
It's possible though that building/buying an adapter might be required to adapt the physical connector and pass the electrical signals, this I have no idea.
Is there a best way to image a drive from DOS? I've got an ST-157A in a 286 that I recently got and I want to back that up using my go-to GNU ddrescue but the USB IDE interface I have doesn't like the drive for some reason (it does spin up and have activity), and since it's a 286, that means both no Linux AND no djgpp. (Of course, I need to figure out why it won't boot from any drive, or even recognize media in the floppy drives, or notice the IDE card is there... It's a Packard Bell Legend I (Legend 1?), which frustratingly has no preserved documentation online (which also makes me uncomfortable trying to remove the drive from the case). There is a UA-cam video of someone repairing a dead PSU in theirs; I need to see if they have the same problem as I do after that repair.) I think either Adrian Black or NCommander had some quick C program that used the BIOS?
@@andlabs I'm not aware of such a software that is 286 compatible. That doesn't mean it doesn't exists though.
Sounds to me you'll need to find workable hardware, something that is 386 or newer and supports IDE to image that drive.
The biggest issue with imaging is it could inadvertently leave private information on the image.
I used to use Interlnk and Intersvr in the 90's when I had a 386sx40 and we didn't have networking. Using it over Parallel Port is *FAR* faster, as the port would transmit/receive far faster than the serial port. The cables actually were pretty common back in the day. It was slower than MFM drive speeds, but it was fast enough that at the time you technically could run Doom from one machine onto another and it wasn't unusuably slow like it was over serial.
Good stuff. I'm a big fan of FastLynx for transfer as well. Interlink and LapLink work great too!!
Great video. Any chance you release the backup? I've a Dauphin DTR-1 that needs a restore.
Last year I have the same backup problem with an industrial pc without the dos folder, only with the command.com and even without vga. The solution was not interlink but to use only the copy command that can send and receive files over the com port and copy all the files over serial.
Thanks a lot for the great video about file transfer from your Dauphin DTR-1. I also own one and have thought of how to use the Ethernet port to copy files to another computer. After seeing your video now I know 😊 It could be awesome if the Kittyhawk drive could be replaced by something more up to date like a CF-card. Maybe an idea for a new video? 😉 Keep up the good work 👍
I enjoyed this video, thank you
19:16 “Never delete anything while you’re doing data backup.”
lol spoken by a man with experience, was thinking about exactly this when I was migrating between phones earlier this week.
I know this is an older video but on the topic of making a virtualized version of that install: maybe nowadays 86Box would be a good approach?
(Yes I know the video's old but...) You couldn't just pull the HDD?
Also: what connector does it use? I may have something for you if it's 44pin and the BIOS isn't stupid.
Just looked up those drives -- LORD that is weird. CompactFlash microdrive with a 44pin (+4pin jumper) IDE connector hanging off the side just like a 2.5in laptop drive. I have something that will work if the Dauphin can work with virtual geometries but it's the wrong gender of connector! so I'll have to get an adapter (which is not hard and I need to do that anyways for myself TBH lol).
Want some old 44pin IDE thin client DiskOnModules? :D
Back in 1994 when I worked in a PC clone shop, we loaded all of our machines via Laplink using a parallel port cable. 500k baud was blazing fast for DOS machines back in the day, and it didn't require us to add a network card or anything else super screwy. It worked over serial as well, and we used that on occasion when repairing older systems that have no parallel port. We all had boot disks that we used to boot the system, copy the standard DOS configuration, and then scan for viruses. That worked great until we got infected by a customer's system with a virus that was able to evade our DOS based AV ... Had to create new boot disks with a new AV engine, and clean every system we had infected ... ahh, good times.
Good point! That would have saved the day here if Zip drivers weren't installed.
You got Norton Commander in there, why bother with command line?
Would using something that does a sector-by-sector backup be better? That way things that are not files (like the boot sector) would also be preserved and the chances would be higher for someone to revive such a thing with an SD card to ide adapter for example...
Ghost was the first thing that came to mind for doing a really proper backup, which allows for resizing drives and other tricks. There must be something simpler out there that can do sector-level cloning. I used LapLink with good success for installing a bunch of systems back as my first summer job as a teen, though I think that does file-level copying (though that's usually fine as long as it grabs all of the hidden/system files -- may just need to use a boot disk to run "sys" and maybe "fdisk /mbr" on the drive to make it bootable after
@@mulad yes it's called 'dd'
'dd_rescue' is even better for this type of purpose
Ghost for dos can use networking to back up a machine to a remote machine
So i bought few nos and used kittyhawk drives and one of them has special test software for this tablet unit, i have yet to back it up but if i do where should i upload it for people?
Internet Archive!
You are so lucky that your DOS asks for ZIP compatibility, mine doest. I would also like to backup mine DTR1 but no luck.
Its been 4 months since you posted this. I think the time has come. Please check files and make disk image public.
If you can connect to it over serial can you conect to it over cornflakes?
Fun fact. The FTDI chips can run serial at 3M Baud.
Why not just run a FTP client on Windows 3.11? Wouldnt its install have a TCP/IP driver. I remember running FTP clients on Windoes 3.11. Also, you should use /e instead of /s. Also, ever iteration of Zip drives with larger sizes, can read the older drives formats.
@@nneeerrrd Jesus christ, get off your high horse. And what the hell did you do to contribute to the software archival community?
@@nneeerrrd Well thank god we have you here to gatekeep for us!
@@nneeerrrd oh yes because of course the number 1 most important thing for everybody to know by heart in 2021 is the parameters to xcopy
@@nneeerrrd Haha, yeah! This man isn't old like us! What a loser!
oh
@@nneeerrrd It must really, really suck to be you and have that attitude. I always kind of feel sorry for the people like you, who apparently have so many issues it bleeds over into being rude to others for no reason.
So what he isn't from "that era." Funny part is that more people that aren't "from that era" are doing more to preserve this stuff and make content about it than the people that are from "that era." Let's see your videos about this stuff....oh wait.....your channel is empty. I am from that "era" and I am thrilled to see so many people who weren't take an interest in this old junk that normally would have been landfilled by now.
If you don't like this man's content - you should feel free to just f*ck right off to somewhere else so the rest of us don't have to be subject to your nonsense that serves zero purpose other than illustrate what a shitbird of a human you are being. The only "lamer" here is you and your use of "fanboi" to justify your pointless and failed view.
Gawd I had one of these back in the day. They were blown out for $99, I think through the DAK catalog. It was so awfully slow, that it was almost unusable. Now I wish I'd kept it, of course. ;) BTW, you didn't link LGR's video like you said you would in the video (not that I couldn't find it).
Would it not be possible to dump the BIOS and VGA ROM from the device and put together a PCem configuration that could run the unmodified backup files?
Back in the days I used Norton Commander v4 to transfer files between computers via a parallel cable - super easy! I think you could set it to work over the serial port as well.
21:10 The dtr experience sounds like something Joe Rogen would be into.
Used Laplink a lot, and it was very reliable. Always carried a Laplink cable in my tool bag. Zip drives...were not reliable in my experience.
You should try installing Windows NT 3.1 on it and seeing if there are any NT versions of the drivers that are required to run this machine properly.
interesting tech
Just saying, I use zip drives a lot. They work on IDE, SCSI, USB and LPT ports and almost every OS has drivers for it. The Zip 250 can both read and format the Zip 100 series disks. Great format and it has saved the day many times working on both Wintel & Mac Systems ;)
Almost every one of my retro computers has a ZIP drive, plus a couple external. They’re great! Need to track down the one I used back in the 90s so I can have a parallel version on hand too. :-)
Can the HDD in these be replaced with one of those right angle 44pin Apacer DOMs used a 44pin female to male adapter or would the pinout be somehow flipped.
It's apparently a MicroDrive, which has the same form factor as a Compact Flash card. An old 128mb card would work well here, the software is a few megabytes in size and some DOS boards have issues with 1GB+ drives
No the kittyhawk drives are much different than microdrives they're like the shaped of a 3.5in hdd of the era scaled down to 1.3in that have a 44pin connector off to the side of the drive.
@@brandonupchurch7628 That Apacer DOM or a PCB adapter are probably the only alternatives for the Dauphin
anyone know if there is an archive for dauphins other computers? ive got a pair of 1050's and im not sure if either is still on its stock operating sstem or if they have some special drivers they wouldnt work right without, but for now both have working hard drives that do boot at least some of the time
back then these type of computers were unicorns!! nowadays these type of computers(modern tablets) are EVERYWHERE! everyone and their grandmother has one! 😁
Yeah, without a slash in DOS copy commands, it will just grab current directory.
I ran my download section for my BBS off rotating ZIP disks because CD drives and disks in 1996 were even more expensive, but hey, back then, it worked, sorta 👍🏻
You should get a copy of one of the BSDs or old Linux's running on that tablet, and DD the hdd over to your zip disk. It would be interesting to run a recovery tool on the drive image to see what might be lurking "deleted" but still around. EDIT: Oh ... lol I finished the video... lol perhaps snooping is not what you want to do :P
❤️
Interlink/Interserver were quite fast on serial, if use MODE COM1:115200,N,8,1,P
As null-modem cable I often used as quick-and-dirty solution a regular 3 wires power cable (I used max 2m cable length); it is thick enough to slide it on the com port pins, as follow: pin 2 to pin 3, pin 3 to pin 2, pin 5 to pin 5 for a 9 pin COM port connector. Not used DTR, DTS, CTS CTR pins, only TxD, RxD and GND
As a better alternative, use Norton Commander 5+ as it have a built in Link command (that can be used to copy NC on the slave computer) with added bonus of the dual panel file manager for browsing/ transferring files. Or, if you like it better, use its built in Terminal.
A system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem.
I was going to see if you could use a USB Zip 750 drive as a better way to transfer files from/to Zip disks with a newer computer (I had one that was still sealed in it's bag), but going through ALL my Zip-disks (100MB and 750MB disks), it seems like NONE of my Zip disks and/or drives are working anymore; Icouldn't read disks in the 750 USB, a 250mb UltraBay drive, IDE 100mb, or even parallel port 100mb drives (that's on Fedora 34, MSWin10 and MSWin 2000).
I think at this point I may just throw out the whole batch, drives and disks, since I don't need any more broken junk in my house.
Yup. Zip drives are some kind of SCSI over parallel port. I had one back in the day, and it got hit hard by the "click of death". So I personally don't trust zip drives any further than I can throw 'em, which is a stupid saying, because I think I could wing one of those fuckers pretty far.... in fact, I think I *HAVE* done so in the past.
I'd imagine it'd be rather easy to send a Zip drive flying a rather considerable distance. Doubly so if there are still cables attached.
(Let's just say that, while I've never dealt with dying Zip drives, there is an old FDD on the roof of a nearby pawn shop that got tossed along with the damaged FDD cable when the drive died and killed the mainboard in the process. Didn't think it'd go that far, expected it to crash down into the street. As far as I know, it's still up there. Never bothered to see if I could find out.)
In the words of Deadpool: "Zip it, Sinéad" :D
Can someone modify Diskcopy to work on hard drives and simplify this whole ordeal in the future???
The oldest lesson of computing. K.I.S.S. Keep it Stupid Simple.
Using the ZIP disk was the right way to start with.
interlink, interlink, interlink
Using norton ghost? For make 1:1 drive image? Is simple.
Tech You Are Preparing 20th Aniversary Windows XP? Sorry For Write Bad Becase Im Mexican IMAO
"within cells interlinked"
i can't believe you didn't consider minicom and zmodem over serial null :3
but i guess you would have to have all of that business on the tablet as well. :P
Assuming the micro drive is going to fail soon anyway, why not just pull it out and read the data with an adapter and put a DOM or similar in its place? I appreciate it would make for a less interesting video.
i use zip 250 zip disks i love
Lol yes, it was your fault for not having the slash in there... you said "copy all files on the c-drives current working path" not "copy all file on the c-drives root" :P
Pause at 16:30. What in the world happened there?
At 8:06 I mention that I need to edit the display's colors in the video to make it more visible on camera. If you want to see what that entails I have a video on my second channel all about that: ua-cam.com/video/CqOoY-o-j-Q/v-deo.html
del. is enough
Take out hdd, connect to modern-ish pc/laptop, boot clonezilla, clone drive, be done.
That’s what I would have done. Then replaced the drive.
@@andrewlittleboy8532 Maybe clonezilla looks a little intimidating at first glance, but it is really really easy to use and very intuitive with lots of options !
Why make a video if doing the work is miserable? You sound so annoyed.
Because not everything goes to plan, and a video that shows that can be just as entertaining and informative as a video where everything just works?