Quote:
My concern is that once a disk starts to fail continued use is likely to result in complete failure.
This is EXACTLY my concern as well, and I have a plan but I'm running into roadblocks all along the way. The best solution I can think of is to build a VM to run SCO OpenServer 5.0.6, which is my current licensed product. I have found an article using Google that explains how someone did this successfully in VM Workstation. The initial problem I'm running into there is getting access to a floppy with the BTLD driver that is supposedly compatible for the installation of the O/S to work in a VM. I have obtained the driver file, and created a unix floppy that may work, but all I have is a USB floppy drive and the VM will not recognize it, so I can't even try it. My second option is to create an .iso image of the floppy, which the VM should be able to use, but I can't get Windows XP to create an .iso file from the floppy - windows acts like the floppy is empty or unformatted. I have used my SCO box to create an .iso file from the floppy, but I can't get it copied out of SCO using ftp, or write it to another floppy - nothing seems to work.
I think my tape backup is the whole system, so if I could get a working installation of Openserver 5.0.6 either on newer hardware, or in a VM, then I could try restoring the backup and see what happens.
At this point I would be happy to just get something to work. The system holds our legacy software, so we really only want it for historical purposes. It helps us a lot if we can access the old files, and copy data out of them, in that regard it is not critical. However management has asked me to "do whatever possible" to try and keep the information accessible to us.
Any ideas or help you can offer me would be appreciated. Have you had success with installing 5.0.6 on a VM?