Not really Unix specific, but since this mailing list has a very large number of tinkerers, I thought I could get some input.
I work in the cleanroom here at the Y and we recently had a tool bite the dust. A small computer runs all the hardware (vacuum pumps, interlocks, etc) and it had a hard drive crash/data issue. The hardware is late 90's, so it's finicky, to say the least. A Pentium 166 MHz processor with a BIOS that can't boot hard drives larger than 4 GB. The system runs Windows NT 4 and a proprietary software that dropped support 7 years ago. To re-tool the machine to the current decade of hardware, it would be in the thousands of dollars. It's been a slight chore finding *reliable* replacement hard disks that would work in this machine. They're all EXPENSIVE refurbs or used/shady hardware on eBay. I was wondering what the feasibility of a CF card in a CF IDE adapter would be. From my reading, CF cards have IDE chips in them, and present themselves as a hard drive. At face value, the late 90's computer shouldn't have any clue that it's not a spinning magnetic hard drive. I can handle the caveat of disabling the page file. Other than that, there's not really any hard disk activity that would cause it to wear the CF card down. Very little logging (and even then, that's aggregating, not write/erasing). Any stories that people want to share? -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
