2007-10-07

Floppies

This is one of potentially many blog entries from tonight's overnight shift, just as an advanced warning. I found a small stash of old students' floppies here in the Cowden lab, and after looking at least one of them up in LDAP (degree completed status), I decided it would probably be safe to take a look at some of them, and format them so I can work on transferring data to and from the ThinkPad 760CD.

Unfortunately though, it turns out that most of these floppies are old and impossible to use, I started the night thinking that the OptiPlex GX520 here next to me might have a bad floppy drive, but quickly moved to thinking it might've been the TP760CD, Although I am now favoring the possibility that the floppies themselves are bad – It's possible that I'll just have to get my own floppies.

The only real bad thing about that is that I just need one good floppy for tonight, to install the PCMCIA tools on the ThinkPad so I can format the MicroDrive I got today, with the intent of actually using it to backup the data from the 760CD onto the R61i. Failing that, I may just buy some new floppies, or a null serial cable and one of those USB to Serial adapters.

Instead of backing up the data from the ThinkPad's hard disc, I would love to be able to just pop in an alternate drive, but since I'm not made of money-for-eBay (yet) I'll just work on backing up the important stuff the old fashioned way.

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