[TUHS] Floppy to modern files for Usenet maps

[Arthur Krewat]

Another thing to think about, and that's only because I'm a 
dumpster-diver, is what's in the unallocated sectors? ;)


On 6/23/2019 8:02 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
> On 6/23/19 5:52 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>> Does the AT&T have a serial port?
>>
>> Kermit would be the way I'd go, but since you say you have nothing 
>> with serial ports, that could be a problem. A cheap usb-to-serial 
>> port might be in order. Then you can run Kermit 95 on a Windows 7 or 
>> earlier machine. (might work on later OS's too, but it's not supported)
>>
>> The flip side is how to get Kermit onto the DOS machine.
>
> Does Kermit have an option like INTERLNK & INTERSVR have where you can 
> run a "copy COM1 INTERxxx.EXE" to push the software across the serial 
> port?

Not that I'm aware of. Things like NULs, and ^S can really ruin your 
day. Not to mention ^Z which a DOS copy might interpret as EOF. I only 
ever wrote programs to access the UART directly, but I remember my 
attempts at COPY or other DOS-specific ways of dealing with serial ports 
were never very successful. But that might have had more to do with 
buffer overruns (or in the case of the 8250 in the XT, a lack of a FIFO 
ala-16550 in the first place). Redirecting LPT1 to COM1 using MODE, I 
used to print to an LA100 using hardware handshaking.

>> I used a floppy recovery service a while back to read my old 
>> Commodore 64/PET disks - he was relatively inexpensive, and very 
>> responsive.
>>
>> http://retrofloppy.com/
>
> If the machine is able to read the files without error, then a 
> recovery service might not be necessary.  IMHO it's a question of 
> getting one or more copies onto something else so that the existing 
> floppy isn't the only copy.

Of course, but in some cases, a few $'s thrown at the problem is easier 
than messing around with something you don't want to mess around with ;)

I would be happy to contribute.