[ale] [OT] - system crapped out

[Michael Campbell]

May be to pedestrian for you, but VirtualBox (according to this:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/VirtualBox-4-2-Stable-Released-292004.shtml)
does parallel port passthrough.


On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Was looking at that but snag is a parallel port dongle. Kvm doesn't (qemu
> precisely ) not sure of others.
> Old DOS app (runs under freedos) requires blasted dongle. Freedos doesn't
> like it either.
> On Dec 6, 2012 4:46 PM, "JD" <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>
>> This is an ideal reason to deploy a virtual machine.
>> Decouple the hardware from the OS.
>> Move all the disk redundancy to the hostOS.
>>
>> As/If more compute power is needed in the future, moving the disk image
>> to a
>> faster host (still running a VM server), is all that it should take.
>>
>> Of course, the HostOS would be some sort of Linux, right?  Probably a Xen
>> or
>> KVM-based deployment to avoid costly license fees.
>>
>>
>>
>>  ... see how I brought it back On-Topic?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/06/2012 03:53 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> > This is OT because the base system here is a zillion year old XP box
>> (don't ask
>> > - software won't run on new crap)
>> >
>> > system became unresponsive to keyboard (USB) on the main connection on
>> mobo but
>> > worked on front panel connectors. Then those quit.
>> >
>> > Clearly a hardware issue.
>> >
>> > Noticed smell of overheated electronics from power supply so replaced
>> it.
>> > System had trouble booting but was OK going into safe mode.
>> >
>> > 2 main drives in RAID 1 on a 3ware sata RAID card. System not happy
>> about being
>> > shutdown uncleanly (many crashes before I was called) and ran a full
>> chckdsk /r
>> > on boot drives which reported no errors.
>> > System will auto-reboot on normal startup at splash screen and now
>> complains
>> > about new hardware (3ware controller!) in safe-mode. The RAID
>> controller(s) were
>> > not changed so maybe a bit of drive scramble in that sector. Time to
>> reload
>> > drivers. woo.
>> >
>> > Original driver disk nowhere to be found so using latest download from
>> LSI (2009
>> > - about when the controller card went in) to add driver to OS drive(s).
>> >
>> > Can't. Installer requires a VC++ something that requires the windows
>> installer
>> > to run. But safe mode won't run the windows installer.
>> >
>> > reboot and cuss. Try floppy image - dug out usb floppy and found a
>> single
>> > working floppy disk (thought I had tossed all of those?). Install would
>> run but
>> > reboot asked for drivers again.
>> >
>> > cuss more when safe-mode now automatically reboots on startup. No way
>> to access
>> > system drives anymore.
>> >
>> > Replace motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD drive and power supply. Boots to safe
>> mode
>> > (YAY!) for new driver install. But original drivers for both RAID cards
>> (other
>> > is an adaptec with a mirror pair with application data) were now
>> needing to be
>> > installed. Plus now need to "re-authenticate" (cuss. spit.)
>> >
>> > ????  How are the originally working 3 days ago drivers vanishing ????
>> >
>> > unplug EVERYTHING, all drives, all raid cards, and try to boot from a
>> known good
>> > XP hard drive built on a different system
>> >
>> > It does the same thing as the other drives! Gets to the XP splash
>> screen then
>> > reboots the systems.
>> >
>> > F8 - set no restart on error - no change, set debug mode - just
>> restarts with no
>> > messages
>> >
>> > Insert original installation CD to try for recovery console - blue
>> screens after
>> > _long_ fight to get driver disk (see floppy) to work.
>> >
>> > Try newer XP-SP3 disk - blue screens
>> >
>> > memtest says all RAM is just fine (single pass all tests).
>> >
>> > W   T   F   !!!!!?????!!!!!?????
>> >
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>
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