Nuts 'n Bolts

[robinson46176]

I "did" have a batch of working 5 1/4" floppy drives... A couple of years ago I gave away a pickup load of computer stuff. Mostly old PC's, Commodore's, Atari's etc. I gave one guy a stack of over 2500 floppies, mostly 3 1/2" and almost all of them containing software.
For several years before the price of new PC's took a nose-dive I went around buying up all of the older used PC's I could find. I would clean them out both physically and system-wise and reconfigure them and resell them to people wanting to learn PC's. I made a very decent profit for a while. When prices started falling on new ones then the profit went away.
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I wouldn't hold too tightly to the hope that those 5 1/4" floppies will still read... They didn't do all that well back when they were still fairly new.
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I actually started on computers back in the mid 1960's. Our operation took the whole 5th floor of the only 5 story building in town and almost half of that was computer room. We didn't have a keyboard or monitor. Just rows of lighted touch switches in binary code. No disk. Software input was by punched cards. Data input was by punched cards, magnetic tape (produced in-house on key-tape machines), punched paper tape and from MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) encoded documents (mostly checks). Output was by printed documents and a tiny bit by punched cards. We were a computer service bureau doing data processing for all kinds of other companies including banks, manufacturers, large construction companies and large car dealers and others. We processed 45 different payrolls and all kinds of sales studies etc as well as bank DDA daily processing.
The CPU (about the size of two phone booths) had a magnetic core memory of 19.2 K.
My first personal computer was a Timex Sinclair. Then a Radio Shack TRS-80 COCO-III w/disk. My first regular PC was a Dell built with a huge 80 meg hard drive.
I had no information on DOS, the computer manual only told you how to turn it on... I knew nobody to ask questions. Heck I didn't even know of any other computer people at all locally. I about went mad learning DOS all by myself. The local library didn't even have any computer books of any use. I was too poor at that time to go buy books...
I think I hurt my brain...
I hurt it again when I dove headfirst into genealogy. Gosh woodworking is relaxing (if you allow it to be)...

[Len]

Are you recommending that this sort of "file move" be done in DOS even if there is a Windows application available????If your answer is yes, would you please explain why.Assuming that the destination has a hard drive and two floppies already, if a second hard drive is added will the original hard drive be redesignated as "D" so that the new hard drive can be "C"?

Dusty, easy does it. IF I had a working 5 1/4 drive, (and I have 3 of them but I think they don't work only because the OS are strange and don't "use" DOS as an OS but another object) I would still drop to DOS to do as JPG suggested with the *.* universal copy command and pipe it over to the hard drive. If I understand your above question I think a second hard drive would be designated as a "slave" or "secondary" now-a-days. It's been a long while but I still think they use jumpers to help that designation. I will fish out an old Windows 95 OS and see if this old/new computer will even let it load up just to see if these floppy drives WORK. And if they don't.......I've got to hunt a good one down. Oh, and need more time, as always.......

[JPG]

Are you recommending that this sort of "file move" be done in DOS even if there is a Windows application available????

If your answer is yes, would you please explain why.

Assuming that the destination has a hard drive and two floppies already, if a second hard drive is added will the original hard drive be redesignated as "D" so that the new hard drive can be "C"?

Dos Always works! Dos is non-varying within windows(until 'XP). I assumed an older version of windows on a P3 machine.

The hard drive which is the 'boot' drive is usually the
"C" drive. A second would be "D". If a secondary controller is present, they would be "E" and "F". Whether they are hard drives, or cd drives does not matter. When the system boots up, the bios etc 'looks' for the presence of these devices. The first 'floppy' is "A" a second one is "B", the first hard drive(ata interface) is "C" the second is "D" and the second ata interface for "E" and "F" respectively. Any additional devices (floppies/usb pluggable devices are assigned the 'Next' letter. IF only one ata device(a single hard drive) is detected any additional devices would start with "D". Typically there is at least one more device detected(cd drive(s)) in which case the additional drives would be "E" ... This is not straight forward since the bios can vary from one producer to another and the actual drive id can vary.

Windows eliminates this by not using the drive designations explicitly. They ARE visible under dos and are the method of specifying to which one a particular dos command refers.

Adding to this confusion, is the existance of bios which will detect an internal usb floppy and assign it "A" and make it possible to boot from the floppy.

IMHO If you are copying multiple floppies then dos is easier! By re-executing the single dos command each floppy will be copied(two keystrokes). With windows you must select/click/drag for each floppy(after getting windows to display the files).

Additionally you can create a batch file in dos to be executed with parameters which could be specified(differently) each time it is executed. Thus you could copy all the files to a different subdirectry(folder) for each floppy.

i.e. Create a .bat file containing the following two commands

md c:\%1
copy a:*.* c:\%1


Name this file c.bat and save it to the 'current' dos drive(probably C: unless you have done something to change it).

To execute, enter c foldername

The batch file will copy all the files on the floppy in drive A to the folder on drive C named foldername, after creating the folder named foldername.

I realize this probably gobblygook to anyone NOT familiar with Dos, but those of us who knew dos before windows came along KNOW of what I speak.

BTW Dos has a limit of 11 characters for foldername and NO funky characters(keep them alpha-numeric[underscore CAN be included]).

I realize later windows versions of dos do not have this restriction.

[JPG]

Dusty, easy does it. IF I had a working 5 1/4 drive, (and I have 3 of them but I think they don't work only because the OS are strange and don't "use" DOS as an OS but another object) I would still drop to DOS to do as JPG suggested with the *.* universal copy command and pipe it over to the hard drive. If I understand your above question I think a second hard drive would be designated as a "slave" or "secondary" now-a-days. It's been a long while but I still think they use jumpers to help that designation. I will fish out an old Windows 95 OS and see if this old/new computer will even let it load up just to see if these floppy drives WORK. And if they don't.......I've got to hunt a good one down. Oh, and need more time, as always.......

Len I answered Dusty b4 reading your post. W95 will work just fine! The issue you MAY encounter is the floppy hardware interface. The 5.25 floppies used a different connector/cable than the 3.5. The 5.25 are a larger connector which slips directly onto the pc board of the floppy(it IS keyed by a slot on the floppy pc board and a pin on the connector. Sometimes this pin is not in the connector in which case you must identify the pin 1 end of both the connector(single lead colored differently) and the floppy pc board.

The 3.5 is smaller and is inserted on to pins on a connector on the floppy pc board. This is also keyed by a 'missing' pin in the floppy pc board connector and a plug in the interface cable connector(not always present and the pin 1 end must be identified as for the 5.25).

Most computers of the w95 era had both type connectors on the cables. The type of device(floppy) is defined to the bios by way of the 'setup' function(they replaced the old mother board switches with software 'switches' in the setup 'feature'). This is also where the hard drives/cd drives are defined to the bios.

As stated above, the c/d designation is done with jumpers on the back of the hard/cd drives. (Sorry Dusty, I over looked that small detail. )