Hi So I have a really old Amstrad PC1512 with 20MB HDD. There are files that I'd like to retrieve into a more modern environment - Win10. The old PC has a 5 1/4" floppy, a serial port, and a parallel port. The old PC also has Laplink v3.00a.
Is there anything that'll run on a Win10 PC that is compatible with Laplink? Laplink themselves just told me (online chat) that the older machine has to be Win7 or later. So DOS3.30 is out of the question then! Ta.
Do you know if the hard disc drive is a RLL or a MFM or IDE interface?
If its IDE, you can get IDE to USB adepters..... like this one:
It's an ST506 interface using MFM.
I haven't got a 3.5" with the same connectors.
Laplink was standard fare in the win 3.1 days.
oh boy.
NT
Good luck with the drive. It's like a floppy drive in terms of control concepts. But obviously, the signal coming off the head, isn't nearly the same.
You'll be using serial port.
Good luck getting a program onto the old machine.
Kermit is now licensed under a BSD license (as part of being abandonware).
Google isn't of much use these days, so don't expect help. I tried to see if any parallel port recipes were floating about, but don't see any.
You could put parallel ports on PCI Express machines. I have a card with an OxSemi chip on it, which is a perfect little parallel port card. But OxSemi was bought out and crushed, so no more cards. There are still various cards available, but the foreign maker is a mystery. I don't know if the remaining cards are as flexible or not. The OxSemi card shows up in I/O Space, if your OS is crusty enough and needs that.
Paul
Many Amstrads had the HDD installed in a "hard card" arrangement - i.e. an ISA card with disk controller and space to mount the physical drive on the card.
If yours is like that, then an intermediate stage would be to find a machine with ISA slots and stick the card in there, then copy directly to some other storage medium.
3.5" drives have different connectors - however all you need is a cable with the appropriate ones on (many at one time had a pair of 5.25" connectors and a pair of 3.5" ones). You can even crimp a 3.5" style IDC header onto an existing 5.25" style drive cable.
(note I have not tried this, but it sounds plausible!)
You could use Rufus[1]
To build a USB DOS boot disk, and then run a suitable version of laplink for the era (e.g. Laplink III/IV/Pro) on a modern machine.
[1]or, (and I have tried this) a bit of serial comms software on the old machine (like Telix / QuickLink2), and something that can run ZModem on the modern one (Like PuTTY, with the ExtraPutty add on that gives it Zmodem compatibility). The just upload files from one, and download on the other.
(let me know if you need the software)
My best guess here is that if the drive is IDE, get a usb to IDE dongle and psu, and do it that way. I'm fairly certain that windows 10 can still read old fat discs, as many ram sticks come formatted that way. You may need to move a jumper on the hard drive if you want to see the drive, Otherwise, I'd not hold out much hope. I guess you could if they exist or can exist, on floppies do the same trick with a floppy drive on the win 10 machine, but they may be too big and you may also lose the will to live. Another thing is, what is the format of these files? If its really old works or something like that, I'm not sure if there is any way to open them these days. Brian
I seem to recall that the Amstrads had the ability to use ide drives, so if you have an old one lying about, copy to that then use that to do the attach to the newer machine. Other than that, I seem to recall dos had a terminal program that could emulate xmodem. If you got a usb to serial adaptor, I'd have though a more modern terminal and an old null modem lead might work albeit slowly. Brian
But what happens in the old software on the new machine about the disc format being ntfs?
Brian
+1
Basically a terminal emulator on each end with an error correction protocol on top for file transfer. Set it off and leave to run.
You might have to buy a USB to serial port adapter for the modern machine though since most no longer support legacy IO. I know that some of these are more equal than others if your hardware uses any funny tricks on the various control lines.
Another option would be to read the 5 1/4" floppies on a machine of intermediate age that also have a 3.5" or USB capability.
I can't remember if procomm/telix/etc can do a recursive copy of a whole drive in one go, but kermit can ..
But how do you get anything (kermit) ON to the PC 1512?
Ask nicely someone who's got a machine with a 5¼" floppy drive.
So a huge hard disk! I would install the FlashFloppy software on a GoTek drive. Pop it in instead of the 5.25" floppy and then you can create floppy images on with the stuff on the hard disk.
If you have serial ports on both machines you could use the old Phil Karns KA9Q or NET software to make an FTP link but then you would probably need the flash floppy to get the software onto the PC1512.
Dave
Or one of these:
Or see if you can find some one local with a machine.... ... and of course none of the software on a PC1512 will work on a 64-bit windows/10 machine. You will need DOSBOX and possible Windows/3 or some other 16-bit emulation environment. If its GEM apps you will need this
Dave
You might manage something with Kermit instead of laplink. This provides transport-independent file-transfer software via serial ports for a wide variety of hardware platforms.
A copy of MS-DOS Kermit on the Amstrad should be able to talk to Kermit
95 running on Windows 10. Your challenge would be to find some way of putting a downloaded copy of MS-DOS Kermit on to a suitable floppy compatible with the Amstrad.
when I moved to pc years ago I found no software to read the file format, and used a text extractor to get everything in plain text. The source machine claimed to be able to convert its files to pc format for export, but when time came to do so it turned out it couldn't.
NT
Who could then read thw 15i2 floppirs ANYWAY...?
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