Our Latest Posts: -  Google Friend Connect  -  California Proposition 8  -  Unix and Linux Troubleshooting E-Book  -  Updates to Psst book

Translators wanted!

---

Best of the Newsgroups: Sco 5.0.5 on newer hardware

---

What is this stuff?

Main Index

Message-ID: <4579DB9F.20CB18F8@att.net> 
From: "Steve M. Fabac, Jr." <smfa...@att.net>
Subject: Re: SCO Openserver 5.0.5 information
References: <1165567653.797153.197030@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com> 
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:39:46 GMT

Ant_Magma wrote:
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> Before i start i have a confession to make. I have never used UNIX
> before! So this is something very tough and foreign to me.
> 
> Q1:
> In my office there are a couple of computers running SCO Openserver
> 5.0.5 (and yes, it's very old). I would like to study is there any way
> to install 5.0.5 on a IBM based PC? Meaning those PCs which we assemble
> ourselves.

Q1 above is silent on the possibility that you seek to migrate the current
SCO 5.0.5 to new hardware to replace the old hardware. If that's the
case, you have two items to consider:

  1) SCO 5.0.5 should not be installed on anything faster than Pentium
     III 1.4GHz (PIII-1.4GHz). P4's and faster CPU's have thermal protection
     built into the chip that the 5.0.5 system can't use. (VMware suggested
     in another post may allow installation on faster hardware by having
     VM Ware kernel provide the thermal interface between the CPU and 
     host operating system.)

  2) If you move to PIII, then the easiest way is to install SuperTar
     backup software (Microlite BackupEdge, Cactus Lone-TAR, etc) 
     and use the disaster recovery media created by the SuperTar
     to initialize the hard disk in the new hardware and dump a
     full system backup to the new machine. I have used Backup Edge
     in your situation on a system with SCSI tape drive, IDE CD-ROM,
     and SCSI hard disk moving to IDE hard disk on the new system.
     
     Note that you will need to move the SCSI controller and tape
     drive to the new system to perform this transfer. Future backups
     on the new system will continue to require SCSI tape or IDE tape
     as BackupEdge can't write DVD media on 5.0.5 except with a 
     SCSI DVD writer or SCSI to IDE adapter with an IDE DVD writer.
     Either way, you're going to need the SCSI controller.  

     Even though the IDE CDROM cannot be used as a backup destination 
     on the old 5.0.5, you can have Backup Edge "auto detect" the CD drive
     and create a RE2 ISO boot image that can be transferred to
     any operating system that can write ISO images to CDR media. 
     Boot the RE2 media in the new machine with:
     DEFBOOTSTR Sdsk=wd(0,0,0) (IDE disk as Master on Primary controller)
     Srom=wd(1,0,0) (IDE CD as master on secondary controller). 
     Beyond this point you may or may not be able to choose the
     "automatic recovery" options to set up the new disk and restore
     the backup from tape.  

     If "automatic recover" fails, you can select shell utilities and 
     manually perform the setup using "mkdev hd 0 0" (first disk on primary
     HD controller), fdisk, badtrk, divvy -i (note: fdisk, badtrk, divvy are
     automatically called by mkdev hd), mount /dev/hd0root /mnt, 
     cd /mnt, mkdir stand, mount /dev/boot /mnt/stand, and
     then "edge xvbf 64 /dev/rStp0" to restore the backup to the disk. 

     You should review the man pages on divvy and familiarize yourself
     with the file system layout on the old system. 

     If you were to perform a fresh installation of 5.0.5 from the 
     installation media, you would need to know the values you need 
     to supply to fdisk, badtrk, and divvy anyway. So using RE2 media
     and having to manually invoke these utilities is no more difficult
     than performing a fresh installation.

     Both Backup Edge and Lone-TAR are available as 30-day demo that is
     fully functional to accomplish the task of moving to the new
     hardware. (Smart marketing! Once you use the SuperTar for this
     task, you'll likely not want to be without it as a permanent
     backup solution.)   

> 
> Q2:
> I noticed SCO uses a host adapter and SCSI hard disk. Can i use the
> normal ATA IDE cable hard drive?
> 
> Q3:
> If the first 2 questions' answer are yes, then where can i find the
> graphics and network card driver? or at least where can i check whether
> or not my graphics and network card are supported?
> 
> Q4:
> Where can i find information on SCO Openserver 5.0.5?
> 
> A million thanks.


--

                                      Steve Fabac
                                       S.M. Fabac & Associates
                                        816/765-1670