People,
My usual mode of operation when updating OSes is to use a new Hard Disk
and install the latest version of the OS (sometimes bleeding edge) and
to keep the old disk as an archive drive. So I have a lot of old drives
and recently I have been going back through the old SATA and then IDE
drives - which has been an interesting archaeological dig! Today I
started looking at stuff on this old RH server which was used as a Qmail
mail server, EZMLM mailing list manager and a host for a few small web
sites. It had not been looked at since the machine had been turned off
a long, long time ago - to my surprise it booted up with no problems!
Now all I need to do is daisy-chain the Adaptec SCSI controller to an
external box with another 4 SCSI drives in it to complete the
archaeological exploration.
It was a little strange but pleasant looking at all this very old stuff
- knowing with hindsight how the users, lists and sites developed after
their modest beginnings. I guess I got a bit nostalgic and decided to
continue to keep the box (it is the only old box I have that can
accommodate the old Adaptec ISA board) but it occurred to me that it
would be an interesting exercise to try and virtualise the system - is
this possible? - could I create an image from the old 2GB SCSI boot disk
and run it as a virtual machine somehow?
For the record, my first RH OS was v4.0 - which I used in a commercial
environment (we told the boss it was an updated version of UNIX!) - I
had used a variety of other distros for fun going back to Slackware and
before that Softlanding Linux System (SLS):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softlanding_Linux_System
RH upset me when they took their distro completely commercial and I was
cranky for a while but I was very happy when RH finally realised their
mistake and createde Fedora Core 1 - which I eagerly lept into!
Also, I still have my first-ever (electronic) computer (I had a plastic
one when I was kid that had three bits and the clock cycle involved
manually pushing and pulling a lever . .) - an Exidy Sorcerer from 1978
which had to have programs and data loaded from audio audio cassettes
(!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy_Sorcerer
and my first computer with floppy disks - the luggable Osborne 1
computer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1
I wouldn't be surprised if I could still boot them up as well! . .
although it would be a fair bit more messing around . .
Thanks,
Phil.
--
Philip Rhoades
PO Box 896
Cowra NSW 2794
Australia
E-mail: phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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