Copying WP5.1 files onto CD

[caharmon]

My mom was a writer. She left behind all her files in WP51 format on about 300 5.25" floppies.

I want to burn the files onto CD, and then sell the disks to a guy I know who will buy them.

I am still trying to decide which is the best way to do this. I have a few XT computers, as well as a bunch of 286 machines. I might even have a 386 or two laying around. I also have several current machines as well some running XP PRO, others runnning VISTA.

Would it be easier to try and find a first generation external cd burner capable of operating in DOS, and burn the files onto cd that way.

OR

I have an external 5.25 floppy drive I bought on ebay. Can I connect a device that old to my desktop running vista, and burn the files onto CD, or DVD, that way?

Please let me know.
Thanks

[Trixter]

I have an external 5.25 floppy drive I bought on ebay. Can I connect a device that old to my desktop running vista, and burn the files onto CD, or DVD, that way?


This is the easier solution, except that Vista dropped support for 5.25" drives and media (unless your 5.25" drive connects via USB). Windows XP can still drive 5.25" drives and read 5.25" media without a problem.

I'd be happy to perform this service for you for free if you'll let me keep the diskettes when done (I would format and erase them for your security, of course).

If you really want to do it yourself, another solution to consider is to hook a parallel-port ZIP drive up to your fastest machine that has a 5.25" drive in it and copy the data to the ZIP drive; DOS drivers exist for parallel-port ZIP drives. 300 5.25" disks will just barely fit onto onto a 100MB ZIP drive, assuming 10% of the floppies are not completely filled up. You can then connect the ZIP to a more modern machine to transfer and burn the files (if all you have is vista and USB then you might need a parallel-port-to-USB adapter, or just find a 2nd zip drive that connects via USB).

[Druid6900]

Probably the easiest way would be to transfer the files to a current machine from an older one equipped with a 5.25" drive (of the appropriate capacity) using a null modem cable and terminal programs.

Search the forum for "files transfer" and you'll find several threads outlining the details.

You may want to copy all the diskettes on to a hard drive on the older syetm first and then just batch them over to the current one for burning. However, you'll be sitting there for a while putting diskettes in and hitting F3 after entering the copy command for the first didkette :)

[MikeS]

That'd be my suggestion (assuming you don't have one machine that has both a 5 1/4" drive *and* a CD-burner):

Assuming the system with the 5 1/4" drive has abt. 100MB free on a hard disk (forget about the XT), copy all the disks to that hard disk. Then copy them to the CD burner system with whatever medium is common to both systems (USB, Network, ZIP drive, RS-232 or parallel port connection, etc.) or just stick the hard disk into the burner as a secondary drive.

Good luck; that's a lot of disks to insert, wait and remove...

m

[Chuck(G)]

The way I do it is to hook up the 5.25" drive to the 386 and set up either MS-DOS with a networking package such as WFWG or MS/NET, copy all of the diskettes (maybe even using a DOS batch language like CENVI to speed things up), and then copy the whole mess over the network to my XP (or whatever) system with the CD burner.

I'm surprised that some guy wants to buy *used* 5.25" floppies, however...