[Hidden-tech] transferring a file/folder from a win 98 PC to an XP

[rdmurray at bitdance.com]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2008 at 05:06, andrew bellak wrote:
> The challenge has been that the win 98 PC does not have updated drivers to
> either connect to the internet via ethernet cable OR use a USB flash drive
> (or a PCMCIA internet adapter or an external floppy drive.)
> 
> It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.  I can't get new drivers on it
> because it doesn't recognize any more modern devices.  And if I could
> connect it to the internet, I could save the file to an online file folder.

Connecting the hard drive in another machine, as others have suggested,
is probably the easiest approach.  If, however, you really don't like
playing with hardware but do like playing with software, and the
machine has a CDRom drive, you might try Knoppix.

Download Knoppix on another machine, burn it to CD, boot it on the old
machine, and you'd probably have a system that could either connect to the
internet or use a USB drive, depending on the hardware details.  It will
also be able to access the FAT hard drive so you can copy the files.
It might take you a little poking to figure out how to do it, but it
shouldn't be too hard (and I'd be glad to help; although it's been a while
since I've checked out Knoppix, Linux itself I'm very familiar with).

It might start up and change programs _very_ slowly, depending on how
fast the likely-to-be-old CDRom drive is, but there is a half
decent chance it would at least work.

--RDM