USB mouse and keyboard on old PC's?

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biggles

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Would it be possible to interact with an old computer, Windows 98, using usb mouse and keyboard?

Client has old computers and desires personal files to be removed before wiping drives and recycling.

I do not have serial mouse and keyboard. My understanding is that old machines like that would need serial devices.

Prefer not to buy serial devices since not expecting other clients in the future with this situation.
 
Windows 98 supported USB HID devices. You should have no problem plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse and doing what you need to do.


(Also, machines of that era typically had PS/2 keyboards and mice, not serial)
 
Ah, thanks for the correction. PS/2 not serial. I thought Windows 98 systems required usb drivers for keyboards and mice. Good to know the usb stuff would work.

I will still need a VGA cable for display but that is easier to obtain.
 
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Update: somehow the usb keyboard and mouse did not work. During Windows startup it tried to install usb drivers for the devices, and then it asked for the Windows 98 cd (which I do not have). Luckily I managed to borrow a PS/2 keyboard and mouse to solve the problem.
 
I would have just removed the HDD... copied the personal data on another machine. Then overwrote the old drive with 1s and 0s. Glad you found a solution. If in your travels you come across some old usb/ps2 converters throw them in your computer rubbish drawer just in case. They used to come with pretty much every mouse/keyboard you bought.
 
For future reference, removing a HDD from an old system would introduce different connectors. Old HDD would use IDE, newer desktops SATA, so would some sort of IDE to SATA converter allow me to connect an old hard drive to a newer desktop?
 
most mobos have a legacy ATA mode, but there are still motherboards that exist with IDE ports, specifically the H81 chipset, you can get one for like 20-30 bucks and is super useful to have as it has IDE, SATA, and PATA and even serial i/o on the i/o which is like the shit, cause the board bridges tech gaps.
 
Agromahdi123 said:
also you can get a "adapter" of sorts, by using a 20 dollar enclosure to USB.
Click to expand...

If you do a lot of data recovery work there are a few half decent enclosures with both IDE and SATA. (if you are going to do a bit more of this type of work... a good Sata USB3 3.5/2.5" enclosure from Thermaltake or another quality mfg is worth the 40-80 bucks, and then get a cheapo IDE/USB 2 enclosure for the odd IDE drive you see)
As a one off though I do understand you may not want to mess around finding one for a one off. I have an older core2 machine around that I could use for such work if need be... the enclosure is the easiest way to deal with things of course. It can save you a ton of messing around with slow ass old machines ect just taking the drive out and plugging it into your real machine. From their you can pull whatever files and/or image the entire drive as a fail safe.

A half decent enclosure and a few Linux recovery tools and you can take care of most recovery even of pretty messed up corrupted old junk.
 
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ChadD said:
If you do a lot of data recovery work there are a few half decent enclosures with both IDE and SATA. (if you are going to do a bit more of this type of work... a good Sata USB3 3.5/2.5" enclosure from Thermaltake or another quality mfg is worth the 40-80 bucks, and then get a cheapo IDE/USB 2 enclosure for the odd IDE drive you see)
As a one off though I do understand you may not want to mess around finding one for a one off. I have an older core2 machine around that I could use for such work if need be... the enclosure is the easiest way to deal with things of course. It can save you a ton of messing around with slow ass old machines ect just taking the drive out and plugging it into your real machine. From their you can pull whatever files and/or image the entire drive as a fail safe.

A half decent enclosure and a few Linux recovery tools and you can take care of most recovery even of pretty messed up corrupted old junk.
Click to expand...
you know what i just realised? if he was working on a win98 machine he couldve used hirens boot cd to load a mini XP system and copy all files. Been a long time since i had to use hirens boot cd, but thats a perfect use case for it, free, no extra hardware, and it works.
 
Agromahdi123 said:
you know what i just realised? if he was working on a win98 machine he couldve used hirens boot cd to load a mini XP system and copy all files. Been a long time since i had to use hirens boot cd, but thats a perfect use case for it, free, no extra hardware, and it works.
Click to expand...

I suppose... I can't say I have every used hirens myself. Along the same lines once or twice while on the road... I have booted clients machines with a Kali USB stick and ran a few recovery programs. Same idea I guess. ( not sure sounds like the machine in question is pretty darn old... perhaps a modern os like Kali would boot from a CD on it, perhaps not to I guess lol)
 
oh yea, just hirens has a bunch of windows focused utilities, not something you would find any use for on any modern windows install, but super useful for older windows, even has the option to boot into a mini ubuntu system too, just reminiscing here over the old days lol
 
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like this
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SAT...ncoding=UTF8&refRID=28MYRBFBWNNX0NMDW42T&th=1

Would this product work to recover data from an old PC hard drive (IBM Aptiva)? I assume remove HDD from IBM, attach one end to HDD, other end to USB of modern PC. Then view and copy files using simple Windows file explorer.

Since posting, same client has new request to retrieve data and wipe drive of this ancient IBM PC. I tried last night and could not get the IBM PC to boot Windows. Shows IBM flash screen, and can enter bios, then blinking cursor upper left corner of screen. Tried booting ultimatebootcd from cd-rom drive but for unknown reasons it did not work (I did the obvious of making bios setting boot from cd-rom before HDD).
 
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biggles said:
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SAT...ncoding=UTF8&refRID=28MYRBFBWNNX0NMDW42T&th=1

Would this product work to recover data from an old PC hard drive (IBM Aptiva)? I assume remove HDD from IBM, attach one end to HDD, other end to USB of modern PC. Then view and copy files using simple Windows file explorer.

Since posting, same client has new request to retrieve data and wipe drive of this ancient IBM PC. I tried last night and could not get the IBM PC to boot Windows. Shows IBM flash screen, and can enter bios, then blinking cursor upper left corner of screen. Tried booting ultimatebootcd from cd-rom drive but for unknown reasons it did not work (I did the obvious of making bios setting boot from cd-rom before HDD).
Click to expand...

Looks cheap... but it does have lots of reviews. I took a quick scroll through amazon, seems quality IDE enclosures are drying up.

I prefer a dock style... I noticed amazon has a few other cheapo styles that support ide. I guess for the amount of times you would need IDE the inexpensive one you found may be fine.

If you do more work with SATA drives later you can always get a newer doc from thermaltake or something for that work. If you do lots of recovery work ect it makes life so much easier to get something like this. (its hard to find good IDE docks these days it seems). Even if someone is asking you to recycle a bunch of drives from working machines its just so much faster to plop them in a hot swap dock.
https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-...F8&qid=1500928291&sr=1-1&keywords=thermaltake
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
i can vouch for starttech thats the brand monoprice uses alot, and i have tons and tons of that stuff everywhere.
 
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