Yes, I still have one, a super non-powerfull P100 with a whole 128Mb of memory, running Fedora Core 3 (I think, been a while since I had that going). It’s been gathering dust for a while, suppose I better blow some compressed air through it a few hours before turning it on.<\/p>\n
Many of you are probably asking why. Its a long story.<\/p>\n
The short version is I was having a cleanup, and in the old manuals bookcase have found some old backup diskettes in a ‘book folder’ from many years ago. Backups of my old COBOL compiler, ADA prolog, and M4 (I think). I thought I had lost M4, maybe that is a backup of it, maybe not, have to try and see.<\/p>\n
Whats that got to do with the old P100 ?.
\nWell the backups are on high density 5.25inch floppy diskettes thats why. The old P100 is the only machine I have with a working 5.25 inch floppy drive (well it was working when I retired it), let that be a lesson to you all, never throw anything away, you will need it one day; and the funny look the gut in the PC shop gave me all those years ago when I demanded non-standard a 5.25inch drive in my then new PC just in case I wanted to restore any of my old backups from my 286 and 486 machines.<\/p>\n
Hopefully after a good dose of compressed air and a little rest period after that it will start up (carefully not saying fire up just in case the dust build up is real bad) and I can see whats on those old floppies. I think the old COBOL compiler actually needed the master floppy in the drive to run so thats probably a write-off.<\/p>\n
Of course if it doesn’t start up I’ll have to pull out the floppy and install it in another of my more recent servers; one of the cd drivers on my dev machine is dead so I could put it in there, but I wonder if Fedora 12 still has drivers for the old 5.25inch floppy drives.<\/p>\n
So thats my next weekend activities planned, doing some archive retrievals.
\nOh bugger, I’m working unhealthy hours next weekend; the weekend after then.
\nOh bugger, Fedora Core 13 will be released by then and I wanted to start upgrading all my servers to that on that second weekend.
\nI guess as the old P100 will have to be in a different room to my work area I will be doing a lot of running about, but how to fit it all in ?.<\/p>\n
Thinking… if I download the FC13 DVD and build a local repository first, then preupgrade the repository machine, then pull down all the updates and merge them in the local repository… I should be able to let preupgrade run pretty much hands off to upgrade my dev server; I could try restoring the files off the floppies while the dev server is upgrading.
\nAnd hopefully get all the files retrieved from the archives (wonder if I left a copy of the archiving program on the floppies; another worry) while thats happening.
\nOf course then I have to start building a new kickstart script for my web server using FC13 and thats a good few days work to test kickstarting into a VM before playing with the real server.
\nSo much to do, so little spare time.<\/p>\n
Probably be a month before I know whats on those backup floppy diskettes. Not much of a cleanup then, I can’t bin them until I have examined them so I’ll give up on cleaning for another month. And yes that is perfectly logical for a single male who lives on his own (and still has a P100 in storage). Actually, as I need the P100 again maybe I would need some of the other stuff at some time anyway; pherhaps I should put of cleaning out the junk for another few years to be on the safe side.<\/p>\n
I will certainly be keeping the P100 for a while, who knows what else may turn up I need it for.<\/p>\n
Did I mention I still have a working Toshiba 8086 laptop (ok, battery died a long time ago, but it still works on mains), with a good old CGA orange screen, no hard drive just dual low density 3.5inch drives, running DOS of course. laptops built in the old days last a lot longer than the ones built these days; but thats a different post one day, maybe. This one is about the benefits of never throwing things out :-).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, I still have one, a super non-powerfull P100 with a whole 128Mb of memory, running Fedora Core 3 (I think, been a while since I had that going). It’s been gathering dust for a while, suppose I better blow … Continue reading