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For old-timer experts - old computer data extraction

M

mmganga

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Jan 22, 2005
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So I have a friend who has an old 286-type PC. Circa 1986 purchase date!! :)

In this PC there is a 20 MB MFM drive, the ones that used to have a proprietary controller...

Recently (on a 30-year old computer this means in the last year or two :) he has had issues booting up from the hard drive into the old PC-DOS or MS-DOS operating system and as such he has used a floppy disk (1.2 MB old type) to boot up. After booting up he's able to see the hard drive and use all the 20 MB of data on it.

I've promised him to help him improve the computer reliability. He has a custom made 8-bit card in this system which is for specialized machining jig that does not work in anything newer, so we'd want to stay with his 286 and maybe get an IDE-type controller on the machine and maybe a more modern 100 MB! :) drive.

As such --

Does anybody have any recommendations on what to do? Would it make sense to try to locate an old 8-bit or 16-bit (there are two 16-bit slots) IDE controller, cable, and a 100 MB hard drive (or thereabouts)? Then with hopefully drivers that can be put on a floppy we can try seeing both drives and moving data from the MFM drive to the IDE drive. Set up the boot sectors/etc. and the DOS system files and maybe get the IDE to boot? Then remove the MFM guts and put them o a shelf for historical nostalgia?

Thoughts...ideas?

Many thanks...
 
So this computer only exists to use this custom made 8bit ISA card?

You can boot it from floppy and access the disk? Copy whatever software and data he needs to operate this card off the failing disk onto floppy, unless there is a copy elsewhere.

There is literally like two decades of hardware available that can run the same DOS a 286 would run and host that ISA card. Get the software and files he needs, hit up ebay or something and get some new hardware.
 
Did you happen to take any photos of the guts, circuit boards printed model number, external connector types to the jig machine, etc?

Did your friend originally buy this system as part of a complete package that included the jig machine and computer? You may want to find that out before you insert any components into the system.

Reason being, programmers back in the day did... interesting.... things.

I once ran across a CNC machine company that used off the shelf components but the developers had baked in disabling their software if any components were switched out. As fate would dictate, the system was a few years out of warranty and the company was too cheap to renew support and a component fried on 3rd shift.

One of my friends who owned a local computer store opened his shop for us to replace the failed part but production sat dead for days while the company that sold the "package" twisted their arm for an updated license key to unlock their CNC software.
 
For IDE, you will be able to pretty much use any IDE hard drive. You will be configuring all of the parameters by yourself unless the card is super nice and will auto detect the settings for you. Pretty sure the drive needs to support auto-detect settings as well.. but no big deal if it doesn't. The drive should have the needed parameters listed on the drive itself.

Here is the controller you want.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00005112Y/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

It was talked about here.. with a link.
http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/new-disk-controller-for-a-286/74605.html

From looking at all the IDE drives I have, the newer ones only list the LBA parameters, while the older ones list the CYLINDERS, HEADS, SECTORS, as well as LBA. You will be wanting to use the LBA settings, and that card I linked has it's own BIOS and supports LBA.

EDIT: As far as just getting a "newer" computer with ISA slots, you may run into run time errors or just crashes depending on how the software was written. Back in the day, there was a lot of software that would crash due to timing errors if you had a computer that was faster 200Mhz. Here is a page that describes the problem as well as how to patch it.
http://www.pcmicro.com/elebbs/faq/rte200.html

Wow.. it has been a really long time since I have even thought about stuff this old. Can't believe I remember it after all this time.
 
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One popular option for these ancient PCs is to use an IDE to CompactFlash adapter. Pop an IDE card into one of the ISA slots, stick an IDE to CF adapter in it, and plug in a 128MB CF card. I can't imagine it would cost for than a few dollars for each bit on eBay or similar.

The huge advantage of the CF card is that you don't have to worry about moving parts on the drive anymore, which is almost always the failure point for old PCs. Even replacing the drive, you're probably stuck with an old IDE drives that had years and years of use already.

If it does work with the CF cards, then you can also just buy a couple more CF cards, and USB->CF reader, and make as many backups as you want to keep sitting in a drawer somewhere. If a card dies, just put in a new one and away you go.

If you're really feeling crazy, someone even has a DIY ISA to CF adapter!
http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/XT-CFv3
 
All I remember from 286s is that there was a good chance they only supported certain numbered types of drives, and not a 'user' drive; especially if it's MFM, good luck getting anything to see an IDE drive you add later. I would really try to upgrade him to something nice and modern like a 486 or an early pentium with ISA slots and a reasonable hard drive configurator (maybe this won't work though, depending on the software). (I just looked at the 2nd link from cyclone3d, it looks like the promise card he linked has a BIOS rom, which will probably take care of everything... maybe you don't need to upgrade)

Pick up a compact flash to IDE adapter and you've got an SSD: http://www.pcengines.ch/cf1eh.htm (I'm sure you find a 32mb compact flash drive for shipping or less)
 
cyclone3d said:
Wow.. it has been a really long time since I have even thought about stuff this old. Can't believe I remember it after all this time.
Click to expand...

When you have spent many hours, headaches and lost hair on such problems, it's hard to forget !
 
Remake the jig controller.

Hardware for CNC is so ungodly cheap that keeping a 286 in service is just dumb.

The make industrial mobos with core2s and ISA slots, too.
 
While this PC is still working, I would try to locate one or more similar units as spares and test subjects. Experimenting on the only working computer is a good way to wind up with a non-working jig.

Some 286/386 era Compaq computers came with IDE.
 
Wow thank you all for responding -- this is very very useful info.

I don't know about all the details of the card this guy has in the 286 computer but he's been told by the company and so on that it would cost a few k to update to the latest card + new licenses and then he may have to retrofit the machine to match this, etc. Anyway, he's an old timer, used to his current setup and just needs a little more reliability going forward. So setting up a new CNC machine and so on doesn't make sense at the moment.

However, yes it does make sense to try to maybe find another 286 or 386 and try experimenting in parallel and make sure that the data is not lost and no steps are taken to go beyond a certain point of being able to 'undo'.

Good idea for trying an IDE to CompactFlash adapter the only worry there is how would these have old style MS-DOS or equivalent drivers? I remember back in the day to get an IDE drive recognized you'd have to configure the config.sys and autoexect.bat to load up specific manufacturer drivers. I'd have to dust off my old knowledge (very nostalgic :)) but I do recall maybe that there was a floppy that came with the IDE adapter and a system file would be placed in the root of the drive. Then when the boot-up happened we'd have something executed from the config.sys and autoexec.bat that would all of a sudden show the drive letter c:\

Does anybody remember for certain how these drivers worked? I don't ever think there was BIOS support on the early machines so a driver had to be loaded. I tend to remember that on 386 and maybe later PCs there was some native (BIOS?) support...but I may be wrong.

Well anyway any more feedback and opinions would be highly appreciated.

Thank you.
 
mmganga said:
Good idea for trying an IDE to CompactFlash adapter the only worry there is how would these have old style MS-DOS or equivalent drivers? I remember back in the day to get an IDE drive recognized you'd have to configure the config.sys and autoexect.bat to load up specific manufacturer drivers. I'd have to dust off my old knowledge (very nostalgic :)) but I do recall maybe that there was a floppy that came with the IDE adapter and a system file would be placed in the root of the drive. Then when the boot-up happened we'd have something executed from the config.sys and autoexec.bat that would all of a sudden show the drive letter c:\

Does anybody remember for certain how these drivers worked? I don't ever think there was BIOS support on the early machines so a driver had to be loaded. I tend to remember that on 386 and maybe later PCs there was some native (BIOS?) support...but I may be wrong.
Click to expand...

You're thinking about IDE cd-rom drives. Compact flash drives show up as an IDE disk drive; there would be no driver needed. However, you would need to be able to configure the BIOS for the proper geometry (heads/cylinders/tracks), which may require an ide controller with a modern boot rom if the system bios is not flexible. A little internet searching indicates some compact flash disks don't support IDE mode, but I think most do.
 
If this were a professional environment, I'd probably virtualize the ISA card . I bet you can run that card's logic entirely in software these days, and hook it up to any old machine. It'd take a couple months of work, but you'd be paid well and the end result would be relatively future-proof. A lot of places that still run VAX hardware are doing this.

In the real world, though? Nah. Shop around the local Goodwill/ARC/thrift stores/pawn shops. Find another 286. Heck, eBay. Just keep a stash of spare parts on hand and replace when they fail.
 
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