If it's like where I used to work, the IT department will have spare hardware and old IDE HDDs in store for just that eventuality.
Part of IT's brief will be to evaluate whether the use of a physical device can be replicated using a VM on more modern equipment... but often the physical interfaces don't allow that to happen.
Around 2002 or so, someone gave me a bunch of Athlon 32 engineering samples. I used the "pencil trick" to get them into MP mode. So I built up 2 systems, for me and for my wife, using ASUS A7M266-D boards, I still have one complete system and one motherboard. Each has 1 MB of RAM.
I recently needed to read some old IDE drives, so I plugged the drives into the still running system, which runs XP. Geez, we've come a long way from XP.
After reading this thread it just occurred to me that someone might actually want these old systems. Each mboard has 1 MB of RAM and coolers on both CPUs. So if If anyone wants them, send me a private message. I would like to get a few bucks for them, instead of just recycling the parts, etc, but I'm not greedy.
If I still have some extra CPUs, I'll throw those in.
I presume you have to find parts from another identical system. Certification is about testing a specific combination of parts and software, and any unauthorized substitutions break the certification. Not using certified equipment opens you up to the risk of product liability. Sometimes the manufacturer has an approved list of substitutes.
But if you made unapproved changes, the system's manufacturer will pass all responsibility for failure onto you.
If they work then they are collectable to someone. That goes for any computer parts from any era. I dislike when i hear ppl say they are just going to chuck parts in the bin because they are to old if they work they are valuable not always in a monetary way but a historic one.
We have this thing in Australia called Hard rubbish not sure if you have something like this in America but its where people throw goods away and the council collects the waste from people's nature strips,
its not what it used to be like 20 years ago but it used to be a gold mine for computers that people would just throw out usually perfectly working too,
i picked lots of Athlon and Phenomenon computers up this way and many earlier platforms too. They used to do it at certain times in the year so it jut mean that communities would be full of rubbish in the streets and the council would come and collect it. They stopped it like this because ppl would take stuff from the piles and because it would be a fire hazard you can still do it but it has to be booked and its not done on mass anymore.
The following types pain me the most, this guy scraps computer for gold and copper value, mush of the time on perfectly working Computers, he will check Ebay buy it now price and if he thinks its worth more in scrap value he will just scrap it. Some of the stuff he gets through are collectable too. With that mantra he is not doing computer enthusiasts anything solid.
Is that bmx an 80's dynamo power supply
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