Jim Henderson wrote:
> That's not a very good indication; reinstalling an OS is easy.  Suppose 
> the system were being used to do cancer research; that could be years of 
> work lost.  Of course if it were, they'd *better* be running backups, too.

Heh. I had one contract job I turned down after a day or two of looking at 
it. Wistar institute, a famous cancer research place here, had all their 
stuff in a DBaseII database on a CP/M machine - Osborne, IIRC. They had a 
30meg drive, 29.75 meg full or so, and wanted me to add all kinds of 
features. There was years of data in it, and most of the people were dead, 
so it would be impossible to replicate.

I asked them when they'd made the last backup, and they said "We've never 
managed to make a backup. The system is too unstable to make a whole backup."

OK. I'll just exit out this way, avoiding the rooms with people in full-body 
leather coats using tongs to drop test-tubes into lead-lined containers.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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