Re: [NTLK] OT - I need an old 5 1/4" floppy drive to recover old PC data -- Any ideas?

From: Zoont Foomby (zoontf_at_gmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 13 2005 - 14:41:34 PST


You must be used to Mac stuff...
Like said, go buy a 5.25" floppy drive. Any computer with a floppy drive
interface (which is available on most PCs before, say 2002), can use a 5.25"
drive. If the computer has 3.5" drive, it can use a 5.25" drive. The 5.25"
might need a floppy interface converter, which is a little gizmo that slips
on the the slot-style interface output on the 5.25" drive, and turns it into
the male-female pin interface used by modern 3.5" floppy drives.

Almost any IBM-PC BIOS can handle the drive, though. That's the important
thing. Even if the computer does not have a floppy drive built in, it is a
rare BIOS that does not retain legacy floppy support. Floppies are too
ubiquitous.

MS-Word97/2k/XP/2k3 can read WordPerfect 5.x documents with the default
install. I think if you make sure to install all converters when you install
word, Wordstar is supported too. If not, I also think OpenOffice can import
WordStar documents. Either way, both of these formats are so 'present' in
the document world, that any decent Word Processer should at least be able
to import them, if not save as them. If all else fails, search for a stand
alone converter. I wouldn't bother with doing the .txt/.rtf extraction
unless all else fails. It really shouldn't be too hard to solve this problem
with Google at hand.

Heck, I still have WP5.1 and 6.sumpin on diskette, albeit no Windows/DOS
machine to run it on or read the disks with. I suspect getting this software
online would also not be too hard, if not entirely legal (though I doubt
Novell is going to come knocking on your door if you download a copy of WP5
from somebody else).

--
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and the groove in my heart is nearly gone,
Oh my head's in the clouds,
but I'm landing on my feet. - JK
www.falderal.net <http://www.falderal.net>
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