Getting files off a 7300--Mission accomplished

[Chris Zach]

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.
>