Gustav Brock
Gustav at cactus.dk
Tue May 15 04:48:59 CDT 2007
Hi Arthur Don't waste time on such a change of OS. In fact, you gave the answer yourself why not to do so. On the other hand, don't hold back using VMware, indeed the VMware Server. It is amazing software and, though not officially supported, runs well on WinXP. It installs very easily and given you have some ram available (you need more than 1.5 GB) you can easily set up a virtual server for testing. Then, if you need, you can move the test server to a production server in minutes just by moving the files for that virtual server to the new environment. The single feature, that you can back up a full server installation as a simple file backup, has done that if at all possible we install all new servers at clients as virtual servers. /gustav >>> fuller.artful at gmail.com 14-05-2007 23:51 >>> 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 _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com