19 Jul
2020
19 Jul
'20
12:42 p.m.
Thanks David, and everyone else for helping me with getting these files
off. Starting on Friday I hooked up a serial cable and null modem to my
laptop PC, got getty running, and logged into this 7300 as install.
Escalated to root and went over to his directory. The big problem is the
system did not have kermit but it *did* come with an XModem like program
that I could hook up to with a simple Xmodem protocol on the PC.
Uploaded Kermit, and sure enough it works...
From there it was a matter of copying the files and . files in his home
directory, then tarring and compressing the big directories. This let me
know just how far we had come: It would take 10+ minutes to compress a
6mb tar file, but when I decompressed it on my Mac Mini it would take
well under a second. We have come a long way...
After moving all the files and directories I patted the computer on the
top of the monitor and said to it "Well Done, though good and faithful
servant" then did a rm -r on the rdd directory. Now I can put it up for
sale and give the money to his mom.
Today I went over to her house with a 40 page folder of some of his
writings. Bob was among other things an amazing author, and the items on
this computer spanned his life from 1986 to about 1993. She was very
happy to see his writings and poems, in a way it gave her a chance to
get to know him again even after all these years....
Now I have a big crate with "Convergent technologies" sitting in my
truck, I'll have to figure that one out next. Also more Perq manuals and
floppy disks.
It's never a dull moment. But it's nice I was able to use my forensics
skills to bring an old friend to life again...
CZ
On 7/16/2020 10:05 PM, David Gesswein via cctech wrote:
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 06:12:34PM -0400, Chris Zach
wrote:
Anyone know the best way to get files off an
AT&T 7300/3B1 computer? This
one has a lot of Perq stuff in a directory as well as hilarious things you
can do with RP06 disk platters (ah, when we were young...)
You may have finished by now but since I have done that reasonably recently I though I
would
document what I did/found.
Probably the best way was the serial already discussed since you can start it running
and
let it run without needing to interact. I used kermit.
Copy here
http://unixpc.taronga.com/csvax/
Kermit setting I used on Linux
set line /dev/ttyUSB2
set speed 9600
set send packet-length 1000
set file names literal
SET CARRIER-WATCH OFF
kermit settings I used on 3b1
set window 3
set receive packet-length 1000
set file names literal
set file type binary
I had enabled login on the serial port and had logged in so didn't need the set
line.
You have the floppy drive. The normal 3b1 format is 8 or 10 sectors but it can with the
proper software read & write DOS disks.
Later versions of the OS came with msdos command to read floppies and md_write and
md_format.
You probably want to use them to install mtools which are nicer for using msdos
floppies.
Binaries in above directory.
/dev/fp021 is floppy first partition, /dev/fp020 is full disk
Also found this page on transfering files that gives another method.
https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/notes/unixpc/transfer.html
If you have a floppy or hard drive image such as from my emulator there are tools to
work with them. https://github.com/dgesswein/s4-3b1-pc7300
Since mounting was done as Linux kernel driver its going to be work to get it to build
on
current Linux. I have a fedora core 20 system I keep around that the driver works with.
It does have an AUI Ethernet port on the back,
but doesn't appear to have
TCP/IP installed. Maybe I can install TCP and find my old Synoptics 10bt to
AUI adapter?
Never had access to a machine with Ethernet so can't help.