If you’re dealing with old hardware, it’s not uncommon to either have no USB port at all, or just a USB 1.x, which is painfully slow.

To overcome the speed limitation, two options are available.

Option 1: PCMCIA USB 2.0#

One workaround is to use a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card, which dramatically improves transfer speeds from USB 1.x levels. 12 Mbps (~1.5 MB/s) vs 480 Mbps (~60.0 MB/s).

That said, finding proper drivers for legacy operating systems like Windows 95 or 98 can be a challenge on its own.

Option 2: FTP over Ethernet#

If the PCMCIA route isn’t an option, the most compatible alternative is to spin up a temporary FTP server and transfer files over Ethernet. It gives you at minimum 100 Mbps (~12.5 MB/s) for most the NICs produced in late 90s and beyond which is already way faster than USB 1.x still.

The other big advantage: you can find an FTP client for virtually any platform.

FTP clients#

For Windows 98SE, I use FileZilla 2.2.22, or better 2.2.18, which reportedly supports even Windows 95C. You can grab it from the Old Version website.

For any Unix-based OS (Linux or Mac) you can just use the built-in ftp command. I’ve tested this on SUSE 9.2 and newer Linux distros, as well as on Mac OS X Panther (10.3) and later. Everything worked exactly as expected.

Setting up the Server#

The easiest way to get a server running is with the Python library pyftpdlib. A few commands and you’re up without any complicated authentication.

$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
$ pip3 install --user pyftpdlib
$ python3 -m pyftpdlib --directory=[DIRECTORY] --port=2121 --write

Your FTP server will be up and running on port 2121 with no authentication required.

Connecting to the Server#

From the command line:

$ ftp [ip] 2121

When prompted for a username, type anonymous and just press Enter for the password.

From FileZilla: enter the server’s IP address and port 2121, and leave the username and password fields blank.

When you’re done, hit Ctrl + C on the server side to shut it down.

⚠️ Security Warning#

Do not use this setup to expose an FTP server publicly. This approach is intentionally insecure and should only be used on a local network, for a short period of time. Its strengths are broad compatibility with retro operating systems and ease of setup. Not security.