Can anyone read a 5 1/4" disc?

[Pooman2084]

My pops had a couple of old files he would like to access on 5 1/4" disc.

Of course they may be unreadable after all these years, but I know we have all sorts of technical bods on the site so I'm casting the net out to see if we can help him. I'm sure there's at least two people still running an old 286 on here...

Cheers!

Lloyd

 

[JT.]

Wow, the discs probably have antique value Are they just text files in some format?

 

[Arv]

Probably WordStar?

 

[Pooman2084]

Amipro or text I think.

He had a treasure trove of old celloid too, but most of it went to the BFI before it blew up his shed!

 

[JT.]

I'd guess this is probably very specialised. Even if someone had the old pc, you'd need specialist cable to connect it to a pc, or some networking wizardry way beyond the realms of the automated windows network setup of today. Seem to be plenty of people who'll do it for a fee though, e.g. http://disktransfer.co.uk/floppy-disk-data-file-transfer-recovery.php

 

[Arv]

I've got a shed load of old computer parts, but they are packed up. I could quite easily knock one together at some point.

 

[Courtney Blush]

Are they definitely PC discs? Wordstar was more popular on CPM also C64's, PET's and BBC's commonly used 5 1/4" discs.

 

[Arv]

It's amipro, I used to use WordStar in dos many years ago..