Copying a file from a Windows 95 PC

Projects General Guidance
1

I know there is a topic on this already, but it didn't help me. I need to copy a file from a Windows 95 PC over the serial port. There are several problems though:

1) I don't have a serial cable
2) There are two serial ports on the PC, but the 9pin one is used by the mouse and the other one is 25pin
3) The serial port has 12V output when high. I want to use HyperTerminal to send the file. HyperTerminal can supposedly convince the serial port to output TTL (5V) data, but I'm not certainat it works.

If I connected the TX of the PC serial port to TX of my Arduino and set HyperTerminal to TTL, would it work? It's the only way to get it out of the PC besides taking the hard drive out, but the hard drive is hard to reach.

3

Don't put 12V on the Arduino.
Learn to use Windows without a mouse, that will free the mouse port. will/should open the start menu.
There are rs232 to ttl adapters.

If your pc has usb but you can't boot from it, there is a way to make a boot floppy that allows to boot from usb; install a minimal Linux on the usb and use that to copy the file.