gregdarcy
Computer - old school
Wow this was a trip down memory lane. My brother in law arrived today with his old computer under his arm. "Can you get my book collection inventory off this please?" You know the drill I'm sure. No monitor, keyboard or mouse. I keep a spare monitor handy, but the PS2 keyboard and mouse are buried in the container somewhere & I have a dozen people to feed. A quick phone call and a friend arrives with those.
I fire it up. It promptly throws up several dozen error messages then the desktop crashes. The computer is still running though. AV throws up several warnings about viruses and trojans before that too crashes. Hmm. Win98. I have a copy of that lying around somewhere. Install over the top. No go. It keeps all the old C#$P and still misbehaves. OK so I install to a new directory. It asks for key. That's somewhere in the container too. Sigh. back to the old copy to try and get the key from that before it dies. No joy.
Hang on I have a couple of old computers in the office. One is a desktop and one is a server. I try the desktop first. It boots Yay! but it comes up with Windows Server 2000 WTF??? Luckily I remember the password I used back then. I look inside. It is actually a hacked desktop running a couple of SCSI-W drives. But there is an IDE cable going off to the CD-ROM. It has an extra plug on it. Brilliant. Drop in the sus drive. Both HDD and CD fail. Yep CD works on its own. OK lets play with jumpers. Move CD to Slave position Both work, but the HDD comes in as drive C, thus booting the very RS Win98. More playing with jumpers. Eventually I discover a combo that allows the HDD to come up as the slave, and that allows the SCSI drive to boot normally. And it sees the HDD. AND a thumb drive.
A quick check and the needed file is there and appears to be intact. Copy to the thumb drive and remove to a newer beast. No known viruses on these files, so I load them with the application. Crash. Hang on. I wrote this app. A little tweaking and I get the file to read. Why was I so anal about security back in the day? Sigh. Luckily I kept the old security keys handy. I doubt I remember enough to hack the security the hard way.
Computer - old school
Wow this was a trip down memory lane. My brother in law arrived today with his old computer under his arm. "Can you get my book collection inventory off this please?" You know the drill I'm sure. No monitor, keyboard or mouse. I keep a spare monitor handy, but the PS2 keyboard and mouse are buried in the container somewhere & I have a dozen people to feed. A quick phone call and a friend arrives with those.
I fire it up. It promptly throws up several dozen error messages then the desktop crashes. The computer is still running though. AV throws up several warnings about viruses and trojans before that too crashes. Hmm. Win98. I have a copy of that lying around somewhere. Install over the top. No go. It keeps all the old C#$P and still misbehaves. OK so I install to a new directory. It asks for key. That's somewhere in the container too. Sigh. back to the old copy to try and get the key from that before it dies. No joy.
Hang on I have a couple of old computers in the office. One is a desktop and one is a server. I try the desktop first. It boots Yay! but it comes up with Windows Server 2000 WTF??? Luckily I remember the password I used back then. I look inside. It is actually a hacked desktop running a couple of SCSI-W drives. But there is an IDE cable going off to the CD-ROM. It has an extra plug on it. Brilliant. Drop in the sus drive. Both HDD and CD fail. Yep CD works on its own. OK lets play with jumpers. Move CD to Slave position Both work, but the HDD comes in as drive C, thus booting the very RS Win98. More playing with jumpers. Eventually I discover a combo that allows the HDD to come up as the slave, and that allows the SCSI drive to boot normally. And it sees the HDD. AND a thumb drive.
A quick check and the needed file is there and appears to be intact. Copy to the thumb drive and remove to a newer beast. No known viruses on these files, so I load them with the application. Crash. Hang on. I wrote this app. A little tweaking and I get the file to read. Why was I so anal about security back in the day? Sigh. Luckily I kept the old security keys handy. I doubt I remember enough to hack the security the hard way.