[ale] [OT] - system crapped out

[Beddingfield, Allen]

I'm pretty sure the free version of VMware ESXi does do parallel port passthrough after 5.0.
Allen B.

--
Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
The University of Alabama
________________________________
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [ale-bounces at ale.org] on behalf of Jim Kinney [jim.kinney at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2012 4:10 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] [OT] - system crapped out


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<mailto: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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