• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Twinhead Subnote floppy (or other transfer method)

J

jelabarre59

New Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2021
Messages
5
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
I have a Twinhead Subnote 486SLC and would like to back up the files from the HDD on it (in case it has driver files or other onformation from when it was first manufactured).

It has the power adapter, the machine boots up fine (although the trackball doesn't work very well under MSWin 3.1, already installed on it). But I don't have a way to copy files on or off of it. It has a floppy port on the back for it's external floppy, but I don't have that. It had a Megahertz CLMCIA Xjack modem in it (XJ3144), as well as an internal modem (don't know if either works).

I thought I could try using one of the PC Card network cards I have, but they don't go in the slot (the notches are slightly different). I had tried attaching the HDD to my desktop using a 44pin PATA to USB adapter (as I would use for PATA laptop drives) but my desktop system (Fedora 40) wouldn't even see the drive. Same thing when inserting it into an UltraBay HDD adapter in my Win98 Thinkpad T23.

Any other ideas on how to copy data off? I do have a serial "laplink" cable, a null modem, etc, but how to have it communicate over that connection. Or perhaps a fix to get the HDD recognized on newer systems.

TwinheadPortsOnBack.resized.jpg
 
That is a hard conundrum. Check if the Twinhead has Interlnk installed as part of DOS. That would allow for a relatively easy connection to the Thinkpad over a laplink cable.
http://www.trine2.net.au/PC to PC Connect/directcc31.htm explains the idea.

Otherwise, Laplink and Kermit allow the transfer of a small initiator program over the serial port from the command line. That program in turn would transfer a capable client which can do all the file copying. Laplink is probably the easier one to use but finding copies old enough to work might be a challenge.
 
krebizfan said:
Otherwise, Laplink and Kermit allow the transfer of a small initiator program over the serial port from the command line. That program in turn would transfer a capable client which can do all the file copying. Laplink is probably the easier one to use but finding copies old enough to work might be a challenge.
Click to expand...
Dave Dunfield's DDLINK can apparently do this too. I've never used it myself, just mentioning in case it's somehow easier than the other options. His original post in that thread doesn't mention it, but I suspect he might have subsequently made it open-source, as he's been gradually doing that for lots of his old software.
 
If you want to plug the drive into a desktop, you'll need a desktop machine with an IDE controller on the motherboard and the 44->40 pin adapter. USB "IDE" controllers are very dumb and generally only work with drives that support LBA, not CHS drives.

I've heard that really old USB IDE controllers that support Windows 98/ME will work with CHS drives in Windows 98/ME, but I've never seen it work myself.
 
Have you tried a different PC with the 44 pin adapter? My experience with those adapters (and SATA ones as well) is that they are hit or miss if the BIOS/OS doesn't recognize the drive natively. If you have a WinXP or older machine laying around, that might be worth a try. I've also had luck getting stubborn PATA drives going by hooking them up as a slave in a desktop with a working drive, and once the OS sees it, then you can transfer files.
 
IDE to SATA adapters seem to be friendlier to old drives than IDE-to-USB. I've pulled data from an old 200MB laptop drive that way, likely of comparable vintage-- just boot and use an imaging tool like "dd".
 
krebizfan said:
Check if the Twinhead has Interlnk installed as part of DOS.
Click to expand...
I second this. You already have the cable, and every laptop I've owned with DOS 6.22 installed has also had Interlnk and Intersvr (it comes standard w/ DOS 6.22). Set the Twinhead up as the server, and then link up under DOS on the thinkpad and take a full drive image. Then make sure to remove the Interlnk reference from config.sys on the ThinkPad because Windows 9x really doesn't like it when you have Interlnk set up/installed.
 
Eventually put together a laptop setup that has a serial port, and set up MS-DOS 6 on it. Got Interlink to copy the contents of the Subnote's HDD over, took nearly 5 hours to copy 100MB of data over a serial connection. Of course, looking through the files from the disk, I find it had LapLink5 on it.

Probably not worth trying a LapLink copy since it looks like I copied everything, and there doesn't seem to be any utilities specific to the machine (which was mainly what I was looking for). At most could see if the specific version of the CirrusLogic drivers are archived.

So now since there doesn't appear to be any tear down documentation, or images of the internals, I need to do that part. May be a while since I need to set up a good work area where I can leave the system open if I can't complete it in one night. Definitely don't have the ability to pull firmware images from it (for PCem, etc).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top