SCO

Is the Basis tape cartridge fit the tape drive that you have?
Assuming (always dangerous) that the tape is the same format as Basis shipped on diskette, the tap is a tar tape.
If you can find a suitable tape drive, you can extract the data from the tape and copy it to any suitable medium. There is only 5 x 1.44 diskettes in the distribution, so the tape probably has less than 10mb on it.
You can experiment with transferring the system to a new hard drive by acquiring a Pentium4 system, either socket 478 or 775 with ide disk or sata in legacy mode, PS2 keyboard and mouse, and cd/dvd. You should be able to find a suitable system for about 100 dollars.
You can install 506 using the cd only.
Then install Basis, I have the instructions if you don't, and restore the data files from your current system.

I wouldn't reply on magnetic media (root & boot floppies) that have been in a box for years. Magnetic decay means they probably won't work now. Better write your own onto new media.

You can test booting from emergency media without damaging anything on the hard disk of the system.

No, it is an older 6 or 7 inch tape, but I am sure I could find a drive that fits it and and borrow an old system.

Actually thought about what you are suggesting. question, is my SCO unix going to be copy protected with a product key like modern windows that will prevent install?

Regardless, if I can, I probably going to install UNIX just to play with/learn it.

Also, the APP SW peeps keep telling be BASIS license is tied to HD and it will not work on another HD? I am going to try to contact BASIS Monday.

Another thing I thought about, not sure if it will work, Back up my data daily via FTP and clonezilla the HD. If HD it crashes restore the HD from clonezilla and copy my updated data to the new HD. Of course, this only works if BASIS will re-license me for the new HD AND Clonezilla will clone a UNIX HD that will actually boot...

No, it is an older 6 or 7 inch tape, but I am sure I could find a drive that fits it and and borrow an old system. A DC600 cartridge?

Actually thought about what you are suggesting. question, is my SCO unix going to be copy protected with a product key like modern windows that will prevent install? No. The only issue is if there are two servers on the same local area network with the same serial number.

Regardless, if I can, I probably going to install UNIX just to play with/learn it.

Also, the APP SW peeps keep telling be BASIS license is tied to HD and it will not work on another HD? I am going to try to contact BASIS Monday.
Most likely the install uses a technique to save the inode number of one of the files in a file; meaning that you cannot copy an installed version to another system.

Another thing I thought about, not sure if it will work, Back up my data daily via FTP and clonezilla the HD. If HD it crashes restore the HD from clonezilla and copy my updated data to the new HD. Of course, this only works if BASIS will re-license me for the new HD AND Clonezilla will clone a UNIX HD that will actually boot...
Using clonezilla, you do not need to re-license Basis, as the inode numbers do not change, you only have to install the pre-configured replacement drive, and restore the data.