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Need Help Salvaging Data From an Old Xenix System
Milo_Mindbender writes "I've recently gotten ahold of an old Altos 586 Xenix system (a late '80s Microsoft flavor of Unix) that has one of the first multi-user BBS systems in the US on it, and I want to salvage the historical BBS posts off it. I'm wondering if anyone remembers what format Xenix used on the 10MB (yes MB) IDE hard drive and if it can still be read on a modern Linux system. This system is quite old, has no removable media or ethernet and just barely works. The only other way to get data off is a slow serial port. I've got a controller that should work with the disk, but don't want to tear this old machine apart without some hope that it will work. Anyone know?"
Even if it would take weeks. You're handling a historical relic, don't want to mess it up.
Emotions! In your brain!
It'll take a few hours at 9600 baud. It's your best bet. Let it run over night and the job is done.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Seriously, don't go there, not until you get the data off via the serial port (or flatly establish that you _can't_).
You are dealing with a system that is lucky to be functional _at all_ after 25+ years, and presumably got heavy use while it was active. Corrosion, brittle plastics, dust worked into dangerous areas, etc..
If it's working now, taking it apart stands a good chance of breaking something that is difficult or impossible to fully repair, and you don't want to go there until the information is preserved.