I have a friend who just bought a new mini, and I'm trying to help her set it up. Her existing computer is OLD-it's an old 98 box (not SE). I have two questions
1. I can't get its USB ports to recognize either portable drives or flash drives, and there is about 135 mb of files that need to come off of it.
2. How do I migrate Outlook express to Mail?...She's got about 180 messages, so I could just forward them but most contain attachments.
I'd really rather not start pulling this thing apart. In the larger centres, I think the Apple stores do this for you when you buy a new computer, no?
It may be that the USB on the PC is 1.1 and the Flash drives and such are USB 2.0. That, and the drivers likely do not exist on WIN98 either.
There are a couple of option other than finding a CD burner. Zip and email the files to yourself / herself (to a webmail account) but do not download to a desktop email client.
You might also be able to connect the WIN98 to your home network along with the Mac and do a file transfer. With WIN98 this may or may not be the easiest thing to do.
You could sign up for a file sharing download site, upload the files. Then download them onto the Mac using the URL.
Yes, Apple will handle this for you. I was at Sherway Garden Apple Store and I look over and there is a PC on a cart and I thought "What in the "expletive deleted" is that doing in here!?" Then I looked down further and there is a brand new iMac in a box; I then realized he just bought the iMac and was having his old data moved.
I am wondering if I should just sign her up for a free 90 day MobileMe account. Doesn't it use iMAP to synch the mail? They also provide 20 gb of storage which is far more than she needs. She hasn't got much money so she would be unlikely to keep the account, but that's no matter.
What do people think?
I appreciate the help...this is pretty basic stuff but I never claimed to be any kind of expert.
Mobile me will do that as well; Mobile Me does not work with IE so you will need Safari or FireFox. Why not buy Mobile Me; I bought it after saying for years I wouldn't and love it!
Windoze 98 does not do (and can not do) USB Flash style devices - there are no drivers. Minimum is 98 SE, but even then, you have to have specific drivers for each device.
Transfers would depend on what files need to be transfered, and what conversions would be needed. If the files are of smallish size, then perhaps the simplest solution is to just e-mail each file as an attachment to something like a GMail account, then download them onto the Mac.
Getting networks to run under old 98 can be problematic, many machines of that era were not equipped with network cards - but they do have serial ports that the Mac doesn't have. In these situations, I use a Serial dongle on the Mac, and just use ZModem to accomplish the transfers, with Telix (or DigiTerm) on the PC end and ZTerm on the Mac end. It may take some time, but you can throttle open the port to 56kbaud on a null modem setup, which is tolerable if one is having a coffee.
Of course, if the Windoze box has a CD burner, then that is the way to do it, but machines of that age normally did not have burners. You could go the floppy route, if all files are smaller than 1.44MB, then use a USB floppy on the Mac side to finish the transfer.
I don't think Apple's data transfer offer covers Windoze 98 machines, since they will not be able to connect to it in any meaningful way - I think they are more about XP, which has all of the basics built in. Adding drivers to a Windoze 98 box is a fast way of trashing the system, so I would suggest a great deal of care in doing this operation.
As for Outlook - that would also depend upon if the e-mails are in actual Outlook or in Outlook Express. Outlook should transfer, Outlook Express, well, your mileage will vary as it was an oddball that has long been obsolete. But then, you can probably forward all of the e-mails to an e-mail account, then just download them on the Mac side.
These things are never easy - legacy systems end up not being supported, and lots of data gets stranded in the process, either because it is hard to transfer, or there is no software that can read the files on the other side.
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I did this years ago, but, your flash thumb drive, try the manufacturers home page and see if they have windows 98 drivers. Or maybe even try to find a generic mass storage device driver. I have had my thumbdrives working on 98 machines before. Man, this is really going back! You could also try an old laptop drive in an external enclosure via usb? I still have mine kicking around somewhere, haven't used it in years! But if you really have to, and they way I would do it, just crack the case and slap that old HDD in an external usb enclosure and be done with it! No farting around with protocols then!
Matt
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