On 9/5/07, Thomas Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I work for a large hospital. Four or five years ago one of the clinical > departments replaced a system used to collect and store results from > procedures. The old system was built around a proprietary database and ran > on a Windows 95 platform that was getting old even when the system was > replaced. The department concluded that it was economically infeasible to > migrate the contents of the proprietary database to the replacement system. > The department still needs read-only access to the information in the old > database. Depending on the demographics of their patients, they may need > this kind of access for another 20 years; clinical data is normally > retained for 7 years after collection or 7 years after the patient's 18th > birthday, whichever is later. The department has so far maintained > read-only access to the data by keeping the old system up and running with > no network connection. The staff access old records using the system's own > keyboard and monitor. The department has also had the IS department retain > the last TSM backups of the old system. If they need access to their data > after the old system stops working, they expect us to perform a bare metal > recovery to replacement hardware. This strategy will get less and less > plausible as Windows 95 recedes further into the past. I don't know whether > we have any alternatives to the this strategy. In particular, I don't know > whether the old software will run under newer versions of Windows, and I > don't know whether we still have usable distribution media for the old > software. > Can VMWare simulate a hardware environment compatible with Windows 95 even > when the host system is using contemporary hardware?
Generaly, I have some problem with running win95 on esx. For now - without success. > For example, can > VMWare simulate an IDE disk drive if the host system is really using SATA, > local SCSI, or a SAN to access disk drives? Maybe VMware Server will be better, they can simulate ide disc, raw partition acces and others. And is free - but You can buy support for them from vmware. Can be managed by virtual center too. > -- --w
