![]() ![]() Although it is possible to purchase adapters to convert popular old connection types (such as serial, parallel, and SCSI) to USB, finding the appropriate software "drivers" to allow modern computers to run these devices once connected can be very difficult. The modern USB port has only been really common since 1998, and there are a wide range of older devices that never used the format. In many ways, the hardest part about accessing old data is physically connecting old disks to new technology. I suspect over the next few years there may be a couple unhappy souls desperately Googling for ways of accessing data on their old floppy drives, and so I thought I would submit some of my best practices to the corpus of online wisdom to help those future search engine supplicants in whatever way I can. ![]() I've written before in various places about the problem this poses for scholars and archivists working with the so-called "born digital" collections in our Library, but many of the tools and techniques I use as a digital curator, I also use to access my own digital history. Occasionally though, I, like most computer users, need to access files left behind on obsolete technology. Since then I've used floppy disks, zip disks, CD-ROMS, DVD-ROMs, and memory sticks, and with each change I migrated most of my important files to the new format. My family's first computer (a Timex Sinclair 1000 purchased for about $40 in 1984 from our neighborhood grocery store) saved files to an ordinary audio cassette by transferring data over the same sort of cord you might use to connect your iPod to your car stereo. If you've been using computers for a while, you've probably purchased quite a few devices for storing your work.
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