Win95 era IDE HDD and Win10?

[Diggs]

An onsite call to new customer brought me a 486 Win95 machine that's only purpose was to run a DOS program for land surveying record keeping. He had about 4,800 "jobs" on it. It boots to Win95 (and then reboots to native DOS for his program) but his program won't do key functions because the 500 MB IDE hard drive only has 0-5 MB free. I pulled the drive and docked it in an old USB to IDE dock to clone and it failed to clone or image. Win10 doesn't think any drive is there. Linux sees it but won't touch it. I boot the old drive along with another old IDE drive in his old machine that has a 2 GB FAT16 partition on it and use Win95 to copy all the DOS stuff to it. (No USB or other way to pull files from this 486 machine except floppies) In turn, Win10 won't read the 2 GB FAT partition on this new drive for some reason but Linux has no problem and moves the files to a flash drive for me.

His stuff runs great on an old Core 2 Duo machine I had with Win10 and a SSD using vDos. I wish it ended on this good vibe but the DOS software he uses has one of those LPT1 security dongles that doesn't allow you to print without it for licensing reasons. I'm going to convert a USB port to LPT1 and try his dongle but considering his DOS session is virtualized in vDos and the printer is virtualized through USB dongle, I don't expect the hardware security dongle for his software to cooperate but we'll see.

(...and the discussion could go on about using a Win10 32-bit machine and not virtualize DOS or just build him a stand alone DOS machine, or tell him to f*** off with his 25 year old stuff, but that's not paths I want to choose.)

The real reason for the post is I can't figure out why the Win95 IDE drive couldn't be dropped in a dock on a Win10 machine and be read. I did this all the time under Win7 but have no Win7 machines to try this drive on. Maybe there's damage I couldn't detect but the drive ran great with Win95 and could be manipulated with Linux. Hmmm.....

 

[backwoodsman]

I've had some trouble reading ancient IDE drives via newer USB-to-IDE adapters. I haven't taken the time to debug it, but I suspect some compatibility issue between the old IDE spec and the adapter. If you have another USB-to-IDE adapter that uses a different chipset, might be worth a try.

 

[Philippe]

[...] I pulled the drive and docked it in an old USB to IDE dock [...] (No USB or other way to pull files from this 486 machine except floppies) [...]

FYI, 1) try connecting the drive to an internal IDE connector on a not-so-old mobo
2) laplink cables (parallel) are still a nice way to transfer files ;-)

 

[Markverhyden]

What do you mean by convert a USB to LPT1? A usb2parallel bridge? Never did that with a dongle but, back in the day, those were not very reliable when it came to getting a parallel port printer to work on a USB port. You'll probably need a real parallel port. Some DOS virtualization can have a parallel port passed to it from the underlying OS.

But I think the bigger question is longevity. Is this customer planning on retiring soon? A system that old might be using some kind of obsolete db engine which would require a serious db specialist that knows how to handle and parse raw files. Have you looked at the files themselves? If they're wanting to be able to sell this at some point they will have to have a current db system. Otherwise it's just a customer address list which has little value.

 

[Altster]

reading ancient IDE drive

Oh now that's a funny statement!

How about RLL & MFM drives - those are more likely to be in the "ancient" class!

 

[Altster]

It boots to Win95 (and then reboots to native DOS for his program

Why not set him up with an older computer in the 486 class and install DOS 5.0 or 6.22 on it. Skip the "Boots to 95" part and go straight into DOS. This is easily done. I've even got a new copy of MS-DOS 5.0 somewhere around here and probably have a computer (with a real LPT port) on it.

 

[nerd2u]

No way to simply move the DB to a bigger IDE drive in the same machine?

DOS is a little before my time.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

You can still get refurbished desktops. I found several Dell OptiPlex with parallel ports while I was looking for a new one for my father. You might not be able to install an HDD larger than 500GB with DOS, I don't remember. But you can install a second one and set it as the data drive.

 

[sapphirescales]

It's time for a CF card with an IDE adapter. Forget hard drives. I won't even use them on modern machines nowadays, let alone old machines. Take a RAW image of the drive and copy it to another drive (preferably a CF card). Then boot up Windows 95 and run CHKDSK. Once that's done, it should read in the Windows 10 machine. There are obviously problems with the filing system on that drive, and I wouldn't trust any other IDE drive either.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Is the drive actually larger but the partition kept small via a "drive overlay"...which we used to use often back then when larger drives came out but still using older motherboards that didn't support drives with LBA.

Once you can read the drive (even from an older OS) I'd give "DOSBox" a shot..just copy the directory the program exists in (DOS programs usually contained all files within a single folder). And then edit autoexec.bat and config.sys on the old drive to make notes of what entries were in there that may have been special to this program. Likely some entries in config.sys, especially if it was a database type program...you may seen lines in there for Files=<some number>, Buffers=<some number>, loading himem.sys, emm386, DOS=HIGH,UMB, stuff like that. Once you've made those notes, DOSBox has a spot to go replicate those settings.

Yeah..my first IT related job was installing a custom DOS program on networks.

 

[Diggs]

FYI, 1) try connecting the drive to an internal IDE connector on a not-so-old mobo

One of my Linux machine still has IDE on board. It booted Win95 from that IDE drive (by mistake). Connecting it any time after the boot into Linux froze the machine.

What do you mean by convert a USB to LPT1? A usb2parallel bridge?

Thought I'd try this. Ive used for printing to old printers before but not for a security dongle -

How about RLL & MFM drives - those are more likely to be in the "ancient" class!

Good point. I don't ever want to see those again. Run Length Limited? Pffft!

Why not set him up with an older computer in the 486 class and install DOS 5.0 or 6.22 on it.

I really don't want to find an old (waiting to fail?) 32-bit machine ( I have none) and struggle with a DOS install and total command line. I don't mind getting DOS to run in vDOS and throwing a few bat files in but not DOS for the full environment.

No way to simply move the DB to a bigger IDE drive in the same machine?

His machine has a 500 MB drive. My smallest IDE is 250,000 MB (250 GB). I didn't think it was a good idea to continue to limp along on his 25 year-old hardware. Am trying to get him something more modern and reliable for his business. I installed a second drive just to move his data off.

It's time for a CF card with an IDE adapter.

Substituting a different type of drive media like this was something I thought about but couldn't read his old drive to get data or an image.


Vestiges of the company that made his survey software are still in existence so he or I contact them on Monday and see what their path was to get rid of the dongle but still print.

 

[Diggs]

Once you can read the drive (even from an older OS) I'd give "DOSBox" a shot.

I'm a fan of DOSBox for gaming but I like vDOS for apps these days. It's relatively new (I think) and I've used it a few times now. I install it in My Documents so backups/sync are included.

BTW - It's not really a database app he is using. It creates 4 files for every survey job and that's it. They stand alone. Those I have retrieved.

 

[nlinecomputers]

It's time for a CF card with an IDE adapter. Forget hard drives. I won't even use them on modern machines nowadays, let alone old machines. Take a RAW image of the drive and copy it to another drive (preferably a CF card). Then boot up Windows 95 and run CHKDSK. Once that's done, it should read in the Windows 10 machine. There are obviously problems with the filing system on that drive, and I wouldn't trust any other IDE drive either.

He probably doesn't have anything that can directly read IDE. Hence his USB dock. I don't have anything anymore that can read IDE natively. There are some SATA to IDE adapters but my luck with them has been iffy.

 

[nlinecomputers]

BTW - It's not really a database app he is using. It creates 4 files for every survey job and that's it. They stand alone. Those I have retrieved.

What IS the survey software?

 

[Diggs]

What IS the survey software?

CG-Survey for DOS from C&G Software that is now Carlson Software. I would push him to update his software more but he is retiring in a few years and doesn't want to invest in new.......

 

[nlinecomputers]

Yep I know about Carlson. $1000-$10,000 depending on what system he needs. Probably about $2000 and another $2000 to move his data from his old format to what Carlson uses. And that is assuming that they still have anyone there with knowledge of the old CG-Survey system.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Oh and this might help with the parallel port. https://www.amazon.com/SIIG-Legacy-...730633&sr=1-4&keywords=pci+parallel+port+card

 

[Diggs]

Yep I know about Carlson. $1000-$10,000 depending on what system he needs. Probably about $2000 and another $2000 to move his data from his old format to what Carlson uses. And that is assuming that they still have anyone there with knowledge of the old CG-Survey system.

Thanks for the details. Reasonable rates for professional software but not if he's done in a year or two. He also wants/needs to keep his surveys on file. One of the reasons I put vDOS in My Documents with Back'up and Sync running.

I like that printer port option. Didn't even cross my mind. I may give that a try. Thanks!

 

[nlinecomputers]

Reasonable rates for professional software but not if he's done in a year or two.

I've seen what surveyors charge per job. He is just being cheap. That excuse works now but it didn't fly for his lack of upgrading for the past 25 years.

 

[Philippe]

One of my Linux machine still has IDE on board. It booted Win95 from that IDE drive (by mistake). Connecting it any time after the boot into Linux froze the machine.
[...]

Have you tried going into BIOS changing the boot device priority/order?