Getting Mom’s old files transferred has made for a resourceful morning.
Her old computer had two piddly little old IDE drives. Mom’s new computer has no coping ability for such antiques. Fortunately, I own a cable that’ll convert from IDE to USB.
That worked for one drive. Then the power supply that goes with the cable quit.
So I grab one of the “spare” computers surrounding my desk, pop it open and grab a power connector. Success, it spins up! …but doesn’t show up in the USB interface. So out comes a second spare computer – this one gets mom’s drive installed in it – success, it’s a drive with data again!
At this point, That computer’s on one network, mom’s new computer is on a second and I’ve got my laptop jerry-rigged between the two shuffling a couple-six gigabytes of data over. My desk looks like Rube Goldberg’s IT department today.
On top of that, I’ve got my phone plugged in so I can give mom a copy of some songs I have that are long out of print, so add two more cables there.
It takes a LONG time, by the way, to trasfer 6GB of data this way. Windows is claiming another 3 hours’ worth of work.