<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Hello, <div><br></div><div>I\u2019ve had luck with this in the past:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.ebay.ca/itm/New-Portable-USB-External-Floppy-Drive-Disk-Reader-PC-Laptop-Notebook-Computer/141197298045?hash=item20e003c97d:g:wmIAAOSwuc1bUMET">https://www.ebay.ca/itm/New-Portable-USB-External-Floppy-Drive-Disk-Reader-PC-Laptop-Notebook-Computer/141197298045?hash=item20e003c97d:g:wmIAAOSwuc1bUMET</a><br><br><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Jan 28, 2019, at 11:19 AM, RICHARD BODY <<a href="mailto:richard.body@shaw.ca">richard.body@shaw.ca</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000"><div data-marker="__QUOTED_TEXT__"><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000"><div>Thanks Andrew, George and Brendan,<br></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div> I followed your suggestions, thought about how often (and long) I'll be puzzling over <br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>the megabyte of text, and decided to purchase Newegg's $CDN 14 offer. I believe I<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>have a Windows 7 xp partition if necessary, salted away (in the attic). <br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>I do foggily remember wrapping up the data (a thesaurus) over 20 years ago. It's anybody's<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>guess if my reasoning then permits retrieval now. MSDOS was probably safe, 1.44MB floppies<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>were maybe a decade old, and guessing what medium would endure wasn't a sure bet.<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>The C programs that edited, trimmed, merged the unix-style data ran on a precursor of linux,<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>gulam. I expect it'll be a month long project decoding my former methods and intentions.<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div>I'll report back if I find a way to hook up the USB floppy drive to a linux system.<br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><div><br data-mce-bogus="1"></div><br><hr id="zwchr"><div><b>From: </b>"Andrew Burgess" <<a href="mailto:greydragon@gmail.com">greydragon@gmail.com</a>><br><b>To: </b>"discuss" <<a href="mailto:discuss@vlug.org">discuss@vlug.org</a>><br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, January 28, 2019 11:02:18 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Discuss] Retrieving old 3.5 inch floppy disk data<br></div><br><div><div dir="ltr"><div>I have a PC wih a 3.5 inch floppy. I can check and see if it still works.</div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 10:58 AM George Farris <<a href="mailto:farrisga@gmail.com" target="_blank">farrisga@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Umm it would probably be way less expensive to just buy a floppy drive<br>
and read them yourself. Or borrow someones USB floppy drive.<br>
<br>
<br>
On Mon, 2019-01-28 at 10:35 -0700, RICHARD BODY wrote:<br>
> I've one megabyte of 30 year old ASCII data stored on 16 floppies in<br>
> msdos format<br>
> They have been stored always in a dry, dark place ;-)<br>
> <br>
> Does anyone know how I can transfer the data to a modern thumb drive<br>
> ?<br>
> <br>
> Perhaps a commercial service, since I no longer can access a floppy<br>
> reader.<br>
> <br>
> Thanks for any thoughts.<br>
> <br>
> Richard<br>
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<br>
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