[Ipg-smz] XP Resurrection

[Tom Henderson]

There's lots of goofy freeware for ham radio folks, not to mention 
ancient games, that play on XP. That's why. I'd otherwise flatten it and 
put Xubuntu/etc on it. Yes, it'll blow up now and then, but lots of 
software died with XP SP1/2.

Tom


On 7/18/19 5:05 PM, Perlow, Jason wrote:
> I guess my ultimate question is... why
>
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 1:26 PM Tom Henderson via Ipg-smz 
> <ipg-smz at netpress.org <mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>> wrote:
>
>     Fellow Guilders,
>
>     This is a tome about resurrecting an EEE Asus system that hadn't been
>     turned on since 2012.
>
>     The short background is that this system was owned by a fellow who
>     died
>     in 2012. His widow contacted me to donate his stuff to our ham radio
>     club. In the mix was an EEE, which had been updated in 2012 but
>     otherwise it had been unused, and I mean zero data. It has a
>     900mhz CPU
>     and an amazing 2GB of DRAM. It's roughly tablet-sized, and has
>     Windows
>     XP on it, and not Windows XP SP2-- the point where Microsoft
>     implemented
>     the concept of "user space". XP SP2 broke a lot of software and
>     drivers.
>     It also terminated the ability for quite a bit of legacy amateur
>     software (and so much more) to work. This was a rare beast.
>
>     I found a charger for it (Universal, $11), and plugged it in. It
>     took a
>     while to think about it, then XP finally arrived with an Admin
>     logon, no
>     password. I had envisioned turning this into a Xubuntu machine, but
>     there is a LOT of ancient ham radio software that runs on XP and does
>     not run on XP SP1+ at all, no matter how you hold your mouth, or
>     dance
>     on one foot whilst whistling Stephen Foster tunes.
>
>     The question is, do I connect it to the big bad Internet, update
>     it, or
>     sell it at a hamfest as a place to use old and relic software? It's
>     behind NAT and a stateful firewall.
>
>     On one hand, I'd like to see it nominally secure (if updating is even
>     still available from Microsoft), and on the other hand, you can play
>     Duke Nukem I all day long, or learn Morse Code on a freeware 1996
>     DOS 16
>     bit program, etc, etc. Should I connect it or is its value
>     undisturbed
>     better?
>
>     Votes?
>
>     Tom
>
>
>     -- 
>     Tom Henderson
>     ExtremeLabs, Inc.
>     +1 317 250 4646
>     Twitter: @extremelabs
>     Skype: extremelabsinc
>
>
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>
>
>
> -- 
> *JASON PERLOW*
> Sr. Technology Editor, ZDNet
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-- 
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc

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