Question Upgrade without losing software

[Boyd N]

I have an old Dell PC that runs an older commercial vinyl cutter. The cutter is a high quality Graphtec and in great shape, but PC is old. The cutter runs off a parallel port and the cutter software is no longer supported. It has Windows XP Professional - Pentium (R) 4 CPU 3.00 GHz 2.99 GHz, 0.99 GB of RAM. Is it possible to upgrade the components without losing everything? I have years of designs and I want to get back into using it - purchasing a new cutter/plotter is not an option at this time. Other than the parallel port, it only has one working USB port. If so, is there someone in the Cincinnati area?

 

[Barty1884]

What do you need 'upgraded' about it? I would assume software of that era is not going to be particularly resource hungry?

You could upgrade CPU/RAM on the platform, to a point - but keeping a parallel port natively onboard is impossible on modern(ish) consumer-level hardware. There are addon cards etc, that allow you to have a parallel port these days, but would necessitate backing up all your data/designs* etc, and would be more complex than just upgrade and keep X.

*However, you should be implementing routine (preferrably automated) backup schedules regardless. If you don't want to lose designs etc, then you should have them backed up.