Maintenance

Built a simple backup script that can be run on Windows machines against remote machine via SCP.

1) Install WinSCP from http://winscp.net/. Make sure that the console interface tool is installed, and the install directory is part of your PATH. If the installer doesn't ask you about this, do it post-install from the advanced preferences panel.

2) log in to the remote machine and store the connection settings as <sessionname>

3) Write a little script like this:

option batch on
option synchdelete on
option exclude "*.dat"
synchronize remote "c:\path\to\source\directory" "/path/to/remote/directory/" 
exit

and name it <scriptname>.txt

4) To invoke the script do this:
>winscp.com <sessionname> /script=<scriptname>.txt

Online docs are bad. For actual invocation run help on the installed version.
I wrote the above based on the documentation when I ran winscp.com /? and got this:

WinSCP, Version 4.0.5 (Build 354)
Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Martin Prikryl

Usage:
WinSCP session
WinSCP [(scp|sftp)://][user[:password]@]host[:port][/path/[file]]
WinSCP [session] [/console] [/script=file] [/command command1 command2 ...]
WinSCP [session] /synchronize [local_dir] [remote_dir] [/defaults]
WinSCP [session] /keepuptodate [local_dir] [remote_dir] [/defaults]
WinSCP /ini=<inifile> /log=<logfile> /privatekey=<keyfile>
WinSCP /update
WinSCP /help

 session  - Name of stored session or session information specified directly.
 /console - Console (text) mode. Default mode, when invoked using WinSCP.com.
 /script  - Executes batch script file. If the script does not end with 'exit'
            command, normal interactive mode follows.
 /command - Execute list of script commands.
 /synchronize  - Synchronizes content of two directories.
 /keepuptodate - Starts Keep remote directory up to date function.
 /defaults     - Starts operation without showing options dialog.
 /ini     - Path to configuration INI-file.
 /log     - Turns on logging to file.
 /privatekey - Default private key file for authentication.
 /update  - Queries application homepage for updates.
 /help    - Prints this usage.

Of note is the version number. The commands available are quite different from those online.

The issue with Mike Best's old Web pages needing to be hosted on the current English dept site when they should be hosted on his personal account, while redirecting accesses of the old URL, has been solved by Evan, who says all it needed was:

a modification to the .htaccess file at the
root of the english/www folder with the contents of

RedirectMatch Permanent /Faculty/MBHomePage(.*) http://web.uvic.ca/~mbest1$1

This is well worth knowing.

Building on a clone of the DOS machine that already has various word-processors installed on it, I managed to get WfW 3.11 installed, and even got networking working, and Netscape 4 able to browse the Web. This will be very handy. Endless struggles to get any resolution higher than 640x480 working were completely unsuccessful, though.

Tried installing all 5 floppy drives from PL in my XP machine; results not great, but one appeared to be behaving OK, so I've left it in the box. Attempts to read any data from the drives failed, though. This may be because XP can't talk to the drive properly, or because the disks I'm using (ancient ones from my Indonesian period) are no longer readable. We'll try building an old box with a mobo/bios more amenable to floppy drives, and try some of the others in there.

Retrieved a set of these drives to test, and a cable from an old machine. We'll try this tomorrow morning, if I can find a disk at home.

EGW brought in her Win3.1 floppies, so I started building a VM in VMWare. Took two shots at it -- the original DOS boot disk had a virus, which was removed immediately by CA AV, leaving it unbootable. Got various other DOS 6.21 bits and pieces from the Web, and installed Windows, which was working OK until I changed to a higher screen res which doesn't seem to be supported by VMWare; that trashed the install. Made IMG files from all the floppies to speed the install process, then went through it again. Now it's running, but I haven't had a chance to do much else with it yet.

Ghosted David's TAPoR machine for archive purposes.
Ran the VMWare Converter and turned Radicchio in to a virtual machine - seems to have worked well.
Rebuilt Radicchio and ghosted it with only updates, Firefox, 7-Zip, IE7, WMP11 and CA AV installed.
I had a problem with Windows install CDs which took ages to sort out. Bad burns, bad ISOs etc.
Will add Gutsy to the mix to create a dual-boot machine. Notes to follow.

DOS VM now has WP 6.2 (the last release for WP). This also has a vast range of converters, for all sorts of old document types, and includes RTF, so this may well be the Swiss Army Knife for most rescue projects.

Searching for other old wp programs, I found http://www.vetusware.com/, which is an archive of "abandonware". Got Wordstar 7 from there, and installed it using the same method as detailed in the post in ColDesp. I'm now downloading WordPerfect (downloads from this archive are incredibly slow).