If the files are on the hard drive of your old 486 and you have an IDE hard drive in that box, you can pull the drive and use a sata/ide to usb adapter like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812232002

Using this device you can directly attach the hard drive to your linux box and read/copy any files on the drive.

Maybe solves one problem but not how to copy the tape software from the floppy.

Having a few computers myself with floppy drives built in. A Amrel 786 EX ToughBook. A Panasonic CF-48 ToughBook.

Plus I own a IBM USB external floppy drive.

Either boot a Puppy Live cd and copy from external usb floppy to hard disk or cdrom disk or whatever.

Or. In my small town. I can call in during the hotline radio show.
I can mention I need someone to copy from floppy to cd disk or usb for me.

Either or.

Edit: Depending on age of machine. A 2 or 3 series puppy version should handle this chore.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/

The OP has a USB floppy drive that has errors reading the discs. They check good on the OPs 486 but not on the USB drive which might mean there is an alignment problem. That is why I suggested trying to format a disc on the USB drive. Not sure that running a live CD would help but it is something to try.

I also still have several computers with floppy drives so I would not have a problem.

I bet this 486 does not have a 1.4mb floppy disk drive. Its probably a 720k drive so this is why your getting errors when trying to read the disks. if this is the case you might be out of luck to transfer the data. Also dos formats floppies in fat12 not fat16. Like said before I would suggest you just connect the drive to the computer directly and pull the files off. If they are 720k formatted disks there are no USB floppies that support that as far as I am aware.

Then again maybe your very right and they are fat16 in that case its very possible that your dealing with a rare 2.88mb floppy drive.

Even if the 486 floppy was a 720 it should still be readable on the USB drive. Are there any new MBs that have floppy controllers for the Q80 drive?

On a historical note, every '386 disktop and onwards with a floppy certainly had a 1.44MB drive.

720k drives were confined to "Luggables" (the forerunner of laptops), and very early devices. The '286 seen here had 5.5" floppies, although some clones could have used 3.5" ones.

Three problems are common in these old drives

1. Magnetic head wear/damage/filth.
2. Slow speed upsetting reads.
3. Track zero offset errors.

Indulge in nostalgia by looking under the hood of a Compaq 486:

http://www.totalgeekdom.com/?p=356

Have you seen some of the prices for this old stuff?

http://abcresellers.com/store/page3.html

I had better go and have a look in the attic.

Hi...

Nice article, thanks! The last time I remember working on these kind of systems was back in 2001 when I was volunteering with a local non-profit ISP.

Up until a few years ago, I could find this kind of hardware galore at St. Vincent De Paul or Goodwill. These days, I can find some of it on ebay, sometimes at prices that are a bit out there, like the ones mentioned at abcresellers.

Regards...

2.88mb floppies may be present tho and as far as I know none of the USB floppy's will read that format.

Installed FreeDOS on a HD. Will not recognize USB floppy. Suggestions?

Did you install usb support?
http://www.freedos.org/technotes/technote/203.html

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