Posted on 10/12/2013 8:25:24 AM PDT by ottbmare
Back in the early 1980s I was a first-adopter and bought an AT&T 6300 PC. Believe it or not, it still fires up and runs (though the monitor fizzes now and won't display anything). It runs MS-DOS and had Wordstar on it.
I backed up the work I had on that machine with both hard copies and floppy disks, (you young whipper-snappers might have heard of those), but they were all destroyed in a fire. Always intended to ask someone if there was a way to get the information off the old hard drive, but I kept thinking, "mañana," and the years went by.
Now I am getting ready to leave my home of 22 years and am looking to throw things out. Before I take this faithful classic machine to the dump, does anyone know of a way, thirty + years later, to get data off this machine? Stories of daughter's childhood, a lot of correspondence, work writing, book proposals, and other stuff are there. It would be nice to have it back. But I'm poor (if I weren't broke I wouldn't be leaving this house) so I can't spend thousands.
Ideas, suggestions, contacts, or links would be most gratefully received.
Adding to my earlier tip, we used to use a Linux based PC box, but later switched to using the Mac, since the Mac became a Unix machine.
We figured out how to attach any old drive to the box, then read the drive contents via Linux; later, doing the same via a Mac - though using an external hard drive enclosure.
Take it to your local college and see if you can get them to use it for a class project to retrieve your info. Should be a good learning experience for them.
I dunno, do you have a cassette recorder and an rs232 interface lead?
( the older computer geeks will get the reference)
And I’ve been around long enough to remember it was called the Kansas City Interface.
Putting his old hard drive into a working PC of that era. is. a likelier solution.It will require someone to understand how to select drives in the old BIOS screen.Not impossible though rather few except hardcore hobbyists and recovery services may have such a computer still working
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Do you understand the difference between MFM and IDE drives?
I am asking seriously.
My hoard has old computers with MFM and another type I forget as well, as SCSI.They predate IDE and I have not seen an external box that didn’t require a controller card specific to those drives. Nor seen such a box for decades.I am curious who still makes one.
‘
Windows 1.03 (and other tools) installed on the AT&T 6300.
Geek level Fixing the AT&T 6300 / Olivetti M24 --- tech. bringing a video-troubled 6300 back to life, using spare parts.
Olivetti M24 as a Linux serial terminal
There is a lot of info online, that may help you figure out a path to gaining access to the old hard drive.
If fiddling with connectors of the hard drive mechanism, such that you are attempting to eventually mate the pins to some other input connection on a machine with ATA/IDE connectors (or perhaps a Parallel connector) ... is too much effort, I'd try to get your existing 6300 or a substitute going - running with Linux, and thus gain access to the data on your old hard drive.
Old book stores often have a lot of old Linux version instruction books/guides, that include an old floppy disc with Linux on that disc. You may have some luck, there, finding a copy of Linux that will run as the OS for your old AT&T 6300.
Gaining access to old drives via Linux - 001.
Gaining access to old drives via Linux / also via Knoppix - 002.
I should have mentioned Knoppix earlier. It's a popular Linux-based startup disc system for managing PC troubles and recovering data.
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