Homebrew PCBs

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 06:06:56AM -0700, John Michaud wrote:
> Trevor - Yes the old PC is a 486DX system that is running a very old 
> version of CircuitCam/Boardmaster on a Windows 3.11 platform. The PC 
> runs but I'm so afraid that due to the age the hard drive won't 
> operate very long. The real tragedy is the LPFK folks installed 2 hard 
> drives in the system so there is really no way to ghost the system 
> since there is no USB on the system and all the expansion is so out of 
> date (ISA bus)

There are several options for you. The hard discs, I suspect, are IDE 
drives and will probably be readable by any pre-SATA PC motherboard. You 
can boot the newer motherboard with a Linux live CD, and then make a 
bitwise copy of the disc to another IDE disc, or alternatively use some 
disc imaging software for Windows.

If that's not going to fly, you can also use a Linux live CD with the 
old PC, something lightweight like the Trinity Rescue Kit, and then make 
a bitwise copy of the discs over ethernet to another machine. You can do 
this with something like:

dd if=/dev/hda bs=128K | gzip -c | nc someothermachine 2000

and on the receiving machine:

nc -l 2000 > discdump.gz

I suspect you may also find ISA cards on eBay, there certainly should be 
ethernet cards and USB adapters. Win 3.1 may not support them but a 
Linux livecd may.