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Need Help Salvaging Data From an Old Xenix System

Posted by timothy on from the warrior-princess dept.

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?"

2 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'd do it the slow but secure way. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No way it would take weeks. Even if the serial port was only 300 bit per second and he had to copy the whole 10MB disk through it this would take 10*1024*1024*8/300/3600=77.6 hours.
    Mid-80s I'd expect at least five-digit bps rates - at 14400bps this would take 1.6 hours

    so for G*ds sake, JUST USE THE SERIAL PORT

    I'd understand if he was talking about a terabyte via serial but 10 megabytes...

    But the real important question is: what to do with the salvaged data? If he'd want to post them online he might get in seriously shark-infected legal waters. Not everything I'd have posted in a BBS with a defined usergroup I gave permission to put on the internet without access control.

  2. Re:I'd do it the slow but secure way. by nurb432 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree, I'm sure its minimal to read Xenix file formats for the data, but the risks of old components giving up the ghost are far to high. If it works now, just do it via serial port and be patient. Only if its in the process of dying would i take it apart.

    As an aside, i find it an odd odd claim that the 'first multi user BBS' would be on a 8086... Considering i did it on an 8bit machine long before the ix86 was on the market, and on a VAX before that. ( and wasn't chicago's Z80 powered cbbs multi line at one point? ) Still, sounds like it is worthy of saving for the sake of history, but it's not as special as you might think....

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----