Floppy disks at 2021?!

[borissh1983 at gmail.com]

On Wednesday, 22 December 2021 21:27:01 IST Omer Zak wrote:
> I have a friend who has a PC, which got stuck in the late 1990's. This
> Ethernet-less and Internet-less PC has old (circa 1997) RedHat Linux
> installed on it and it uses floppy disks (diskettes) for backups.
> 
> Now the floppy disk drive seems to have gone out of order and my friend
> will need to read his diskettes in a modern PC as well as transfer to
> it the contents of his hard disk (presumably connected via IDE or
> whatever was available in the antediluvian period before the Big Dotcom
> Crash of 2000.
> 
> 1. Are there any floppy disk drives with USB connection for reading
> those diskettes?

There are usb floppy drives  (3 1/4 ") ones you can buy in stores, they however  use usb connectivity and soon to be out of major stores. 
Be advised that modern kernels no longer support IDE floppy drives .

Also finding media for it can be a pain in the tuchs.

> 2. If one needs to temporarily connect an old hard disk (not having a
> modern SATA interface) to a modern PC, what solutions are there?
> 

You would need IDE 2 USB connector , look at https://www.amazon.com/AGPtek-Drive-Adapter-Converter-External/dp/B00BIE996S/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=Ide+To+Usb+Adapter&qid=1640252981&sr=8-5[1]  for examples. 

fyi , as he probably still have a working sound card, he can use a modem connection with a modern pc using https://bellard.org/linmodem/[2]  or a similar tool (I didn't check bellard's work for a while , but he is the go-to place for such actions).
sound card -> two cables -> into a usb sound card . it's 33.1 kbps but it should be a fun experience.


--------
[1] https://www.amazon.com/AGPtek-Drive-Adapter-Converter-External/dp/B00BIE996S/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=Ide+To+Usb+Adapter&qid=1640252981&sr=8-5
[2] https://bellard.org/linmodem/
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