Retrieving data off of a PowerBook 160

[billnoto]

Hi, I'm trying to salvage the data off of the hard drive of a PowerBook 160. I am considering buying the serial cables necessary to do a null-modem transfer to a PC. Does anyone have any experience doing that? Any walk throughs?

I will gladly trade the actual powerbook for the data if anyone is interested - I'd have to talk my wife into letting go of it but, since we cannot print or connect to anything right now - we are not getting much use out of it.

Everything but the battery seems to work fine. We love the mouse button's feel. The track ball is a little sketchy but pretty much works fine - sometimes you just have to give 'er an extra roll...

Thanks much for any help -

Bill

 

[beachycove]

Best to say where you are located. That way somone local might be able to help.

The other possibility that occurs to me now, having written this, is to use good old floppies. Your PB will read and write to DOS-formatted disks. Open the files, save in an appropriate format (as RTF if they are word processed files), and copy what you need. Then go to a library or the like, somewhere where there is a machine with a floppy drive, and simply send the files from there back to your email address. An RTF file from 1991 can still be read by more or less any software today.

 

[benjgvps]

I have built a PC to Mac Null modem cable and I have archived the software that I used to do it. Once you install the program you will get a text file in the programs menu (On Windows) that will show the instructions to make the cable.

http://68kmacwin.googlepages.com/stargatefiletransferarchive

 

[register]

Be aware of the fact that copying files from an old Mac to a PC might render the copied files unusable because the ressource fork gets lost. This does not matter as long as you copy just data files in formats like plain text, RTF, EPS or similar. It works well to use such files on any computer with appropriate application software afterwards. Otherwise files must be coded as single data files to survive the transfer, as in case of executable mac program files which shall be used on another Mac later. Tools like StuffIt, HQXer, ZipIT etc. help to perform this task. Probably some tool like the mentioned ones resides on the PowerBook.

You might try the floppy disk transfer first, as recommended by beachycove. Best regards.

P.S.: the PowerBook could be connected to another Mac in SCSI disk mode easily. This would make a complete backup a matter of few minutes. Find a local Mac user group and someone will help.

 

[billnoto]

Thanks very much for all of the suggestions. I am located in Florence, MA. Any suggestions on finding a local user group?

Thanks again,

Bill

 

[Patrickool93]

http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/ might help you.

 

[JRL]

What specifically is wrong with the Powerbook? Why can't you connect anything?

 

[benjgvps]

I bet he means that he can't connect anything modern, like a printer or a modern way to transfer data.

 

[tomlee59]

If the total amount of data you want to transfer is moderate, another possibility is to email yourself the files. Then all you need is an external modem (cheap or free), and simple email software (e.g., Eudora; free). I'd compress and archive the files in .hqx format first (this avoids loss of the resource fork).

Another option is to save the files onto zip disks. Of course, this method requires a powerbook SCSI connector, but they're not hard to find.