Hi Jan and Greg, I ran the thing a couple of years ago and it booted up fine. I'm going to get it out and start it up again just to make sure. Hah! I bet I'm going to have to take photos of the screens and transcribe the stuff. Interesting problem though, huh? I think the floppy drive might be the answer. I might have one of the old Double Density disks in a box. And I have a USB SmartDisk floppy drive. Do you think it will read the old DD disk? Though, there must have been a reason why I didn't try that before. Oh, I remember, it has a 5.25" floppy drive. The real "floppy" disc. My how computers have evolved. Yes, I think the hard drive is only 30mb. With 10k of memory! If I remember correctly, the files are Wordperfect files. Since it's MS-DOS, does that mean they are already ascii text? It'll be a stroll down memory lane to turn that thing on... from NYC to Hawai'i and back. Thanks, Kimo On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:33 PM, Jan Werner wrote: > The 40 MB (that's Megabytes, not Gigabytes) HD in the Epson Equity II > + probably had an ST506 or ST412 interface -- almost certainly not > an IDE interface -- which means that it will not work in any > external drive enclosure you can buy today. > > Any of the proposals for using a serial or parallel transport > protocol won't work unless you have some way of getting the software > onto the system in the first place, which means having either > communications software already installed on the HD (and knowing how > to use it), or having a working floppy drive, in which case there > isn't much of a problem in the first place. > > I used to have Laplink-like program, the name of which now escapes > me, that could install itself from a remote computer over a null- > modem or reverse parallel cable (it worked with Laplink cables) but > that would require having a second computer running MS-DOS to start > up from. > > It might be worth finding out if the Epson can even boot from the HD > in the first place. If not, the HD may be dead. The only way to find > out would be to boot from a floppy and see if one could read from > the HD. If the answer is yes, then the data may be retrievable. If > not, the only option would be a drive recovery firm with the ability > to access older disks. Ontrack might be able to do it, but it would > cost a fortune. > > Jan Werner > ________________ > > Greg Major wrote: >> ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee. >> ** You too can help the group >> ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. >> ** If you did, we all thank you. >> Don't make it so complicated. Get an external drive enclosure from >> Staples (approx. $30.00) and put your old hard disk in it. Then it >> will plug into any machine through the usb port and you will be >> able to access all of the files on the hard disk. Just make sure >> you get the right size enclosure. >> B. Kimo Lee wrote: >>> ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee. >>> ** You too can help the group >>> ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. >>> ** If you did, we all thank you. >>> >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Steven Solomon's "pack-rat" post inspired me to move on this >>> legacy issue. >>> I have an ancient Espon Equity II+ (MS-DOS) on which are some >>> original songs my ex wrote years ago. No, she doesn't have hard- >>> copy printouts. Yes, it has parallel ports!! >>> Thought I'd see if anybody has some thoughts on how to transfer >>> the files onto an external drive of some sort? >>> Is this even possible? I'm really curious if some of you ultra- >>> geeks can recommend something. I'd like to recycle that thing and >>> get it out of my basement once and for all. lol! >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Kimo >>> >>>