[Glastonbury] next meeting

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 12:11:37AM +0000, Martin Wheeler wrote:
> OK folks, everyone agreed on Wednesday of next week for the December 
> meeting?  (Wednesday, December 7th)
> 
> What's the subject?
> 
Why the LUGOG is dying / dead or a bad idea :)  Whether you should
wish each other Happy Christmas / Samhain / Channukah/ Eid al Mubarak
or just "Happy Holidays" :)
> 
> Anyone got any particular topic of their own they'd like to rabbit on 
> about, or hear someone else rabbit on about?
> 
> I have a *PRESSING* need to be able to read 5-1/4" disks under Linux -- 
> I'm sifting through all my old software dating back to 1979 [8" disks !!!] 
> and I'm not sure that I'm not going to have to build a new Linux box 
> with a 5-1/4" drive incorporated to do it.  (I have a full bookcase of 
> such disks, plus almost 1000 3-1/2" disks which need their contents 
> transferred.) 

Find a 386 / 486 from that vintage - boot DOS, run a laplink equivalent
/ kermit. [Debian 1.3 and minicom] Snarf the disks as raw images:
organise them into hierarchies and burn to CD or DVD. 8" may be more of 
a problem - even specialists have given up on them. Be prepared for
somewhere between a 5 - 50% failure rate on reading any of your old
disks.  3 1/2" disks should still read relatively easily - do four a day
while you are having your coffee/snack and you'll soon get through them.

> I also need to pull off some of my early [1984] C programs from these 
> disks, and I don't know *how* I'm going to go about it -- I'd prefer a USB 
> outboard drive, but I doubt such beasts exist.)

Norton Utilities - hexdump and reassemble from the screenshots :)
> 
> And can we have a *short* discussion on the possibility of changing the 
> nights we meet?  There seems to be some sort of agreement that Wednesdays 
> are not suitable; also that first Wednesdays of the month don't really 
> suit the school -- how's about second Thursday of the month?
> [Steve, does that create problems for the school?]
> 
Whatever you do will be wrong for someone :)

> Anyone want to suggest something to put to a vote?
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Martin Wheeler   -   StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
> mwheeler at startext.co.uk                http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
> GPG pub key : 01269BEB  6CAD BFFB DB11 653E B1B7 C62B  AC93 0ED8 0126 9BEB
>       - Share your knowledge. It's a way of achieving immortality. -
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Glastonbury Linux User Group mailing list
> Glastonbury at mailman.lug.org.uk
> http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/glastonbury
> 
> User group website: http://www.lugog.org.uk/