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Hey, all. I'm doing some data-moving and discovered I am over my head.
I have an old PC and a new PC, and would like to just move stuff from the old to the new (and can't use floppies or CDs, and the old guy's modem is prehistoric). Have two parallel ports, and a parallel port cable. Have plugged these helpful doohickeys into each other.
Went to look up what to do next, and ran into way more in-depth blah-blah than I think I need, but I don't know where to look for simple "click on this this and this, drag and drop" instructions. Alternatively, I'd be OK with simple DOS commands. I can wrap my brain around the idea of calling up the old machine, via the cable, and telling it to send me stuff; I just can't quite find the right Google terms for "okay, in this one instance you are allowed to treat me like an idiot."
Jane, did you give up on the USB thumb drive idea?
Thumb drives have minimum requirements, which don't tend to be met by the old machine. "To work with Win98, you may need to download XYZ" is not helpful when you can no longer download to that machine.
Which I discovered about ten minutes before I bought one, so yay me for reading the fine print!
Are both of these computers desktop systems? At some point it might be easier to physically take the hard drive out of the old system, and put it in the new one as a secondary drive.
Years and years and years ago, I used some DOS shareware program that allowed me to do what you want to do with the parallel ports. But I don't remember - do you need a "null parallel cable," like you need a "null modem cable" if you're doing it by serial cable?
Also, MS has/had some program that allows you to do the same thing, but I forget what it's called.
Damn, my brain is getting old and decrepit....
Nutty, I think Scola's right. It's probably a little more complex than you'd like, but less complex than what you're trying to do. And then you wouldn't have to move any data.
Husband and I tried something like this a while ago, when we got the new computer, and never did get it to work. Old machine has Win95 and a USB 1.0 slot thing, so it seemed like our only option was serial cable. And then we could never get the machines to talk.
If you still wanna go the cable route, try googling 'dos file transfer parallel cable'.
Good luck, Nutty. I tried that earlier this year and found 4 or 5 old websites offering directions on direct cable connection. I could never get it to work. But the first site I tried is here: [link]
it seemed like our only option was serial cable. And then we could never get the machines to talk.
Well, with a serial cable I
know
you need a null modem cable, not a regular serial cable.
Damn, I actually have one of those. Of course, it's not marked "null modem cable" on it anywhere. So some day, possibly years from now, I will become very frustrated because I'll have forgotten the possibility that it might be a null modem cable.
And you might say that I'll never had reason to use a serial cable again, but with my interest in vintage compters, I'm sure I will.
