[dba-Tech] w2k3 server

I am so reluctant to risk my main squeeze by installing another os, so I
have my ex-squeeze with 1.5 GB ram and lots of space and running xp pro sp2.
Can I readily switch this baby to w2k3? I'd like that, but having just
recorded approximately 500 CDs I'm a tad scared of blowing all that too.

I know virtually nothing about such things as VMWare, and I'm so scared to
risk a box finding out. It is extremely difficult to back up a 500GB box --
well maybe not for the wealthy but for us peons it is problematic.

I will ask the totally absurd question, the best of all possible worlds. A
single box runs:

1. DOS 6.22
2. Ubuntu
3. XP sp2
4. the cp/m emulator that I have for both DOS and Ubuntu

The box boots, presenting the first three as options. The box has two
drives, one important (i.e. client-related stuff) plus one
experimental/nostalgic. The 250GB disk is XP and work-related plus holds all
my recorded music. The 80GB holds DOS 6.22 plus some flavour of Linux
(Ubuntu perhaps, or Suse Enterprise 10.1). The Windows xp boot (disk) holds
the cp/m virtual machine and then all I have to figure out is how to get the
contents of several 5.25 floppies onto a CD so I can plant them in the
virtual cp/m machine.

I expect that only the old-timers here will have any idea what the last part
is about. But I have access to the second computer I ever worked on, and I
did some work on it that I would love to recover, if only to realize how
naive my code was way back then. So: this part is difficult, at least for my
aging mind:

1. computer with 64k ram running cp/m, with a pair of floppies each capable
of storing 126k of data. That sounds laughable now, but dBaseII, SuperCalc
and WordStar could all run in that space, not simultaneously of course.
2. Back when I ran this box as my main squeeze, I had a 300 baud modem,
later upgraded to 1200 and then 2400. We also had serial cables to cross
over and copy the software to a Millenium and an Eagle. (Boy, this is going
back.)
3. What I want to do, if at all possible, is grab the data and software from
a bunch of cp/m disks (5.25 format) and get that stuff onto a CD and then
copy it onto my second squeeze and set up both a cp/m and dos environment
there. I want to run dBaseII and my first code on a virtual cp/m box and
then repeat this on a DOS virtual box.

Last week I gave away about a dozen computers to a place that
rebuilds/recycles them and then gives them to not-for-profit orgs. Maybe I
ought to have retained one, but too late.

You might ask, why would someone want to do this? You might also never have
heard of Pong. These things are related. I want to look at and run the first
code I wrote. It was ambitious. The first program I ever wrote was for
Commodore 64 and it was the game of craps. It could handle 4 players and all
their side bets and paid off (virtually) at standard casino odds. My next
program was preposterously ambitious. I have no way to read the disks from
either, except to run them on their source machines.

Anyone have any suggestions how this might be achieved? It doesn't really
matter that my sources are disks created on Commodore and Apple II with a
cp/m card. It's more a question of how to take such ancient data and bring
it into Now.

I never claimed to be a hardware guy, or even a low-level software guy. But
I sense that this problem can be solved and probably already has.

Ideas, suggestions, etc. most welcome.

Arthur