Getting data off an ancient computer

[Aidoscuz]

Hey all

I need to get some data off a really, really old Gateway computer. I think it's from 1994 but I'm not entirely certain. It's quite an antique - it's running Windows 3.1, it's got no USB ports, only serial ports, and it only takes DD floppy disks rather than the HD ones that are available now.

I had a look inside and from what I could tell the hard drive used IDE. I'm thinking my best bet is to take out the hard drive and plug it into my computer. Will there be any issues with recognising the drive and the data on it?

Also, the files I need are word documents from Office 4.3. The extension is still .doc, so will current versions of word be able to read them or will I have to get a converter of some sort?

 

[Aidoscuz]

Thanks for the replies. The computer isn't actually mine, I'll be going over to the owner's house tomorrow. I'll give the floppies a try but the owner said that only DD ones worked. There's no way of getting onto the internet, the computer has no networking ports. If the floppies don't work I'll plug the hard drive into my machine using the old cable.

As regards batch converting the .doc files to plain text, what would be the best way to do this? I know I could open up each file in office and save it as a plain text file, but that would take a hell of a long time...

 

[Aidoscuz]

You mean to say that you don't have a sizable box in the cellar full of obsolete ISA network interface cards? I thought everybody had one of those!

Unfortunately the oldest thing in my box of crap is a Geforce 2 MX I really need to start a better collection!

At a guess I'd say there are 100-150 files, so doing each one individually would be very tedious but if the worst comes to the worst I could switch off my brain and just sit there converting for a while. I'll post in the windows forum and see what I get.