Early this year I finally got to retire two Gateway 2000 computers that were running a HVAC graphic package in a two building complex. They were both running Windows 95A, and both hard drives were original. I am now able to retire my three parallel Zip drives.
The scary part is I installed these systems.
Probably bad that this is the first thing that i thought of. Alternatively if someone did not care about disrupting the server they can just pull the the HDD and copy it
Makes you wonder why the server was still operating and what type of information was transiting it
Perfect deniability for a ring of pedophiles,spys or other bad folks
.I can’t imagine anything kosher was going on here
No, no, no. Simply bring 2 IDE optical drives, one for the live CD and one for burning the HD image to a DVD. The HD in that 95 box is gonna be tiny, and will easily fit on a single 4.7GB single-layer DVD, you can be pretty much certain.
Maybe it’s running that tech support site that XKCD alludes to now and then where the product is long gone but a social community has grown up in the comment section?
Just kidding. In the video he has to plug the PC in and switch it on. It boots, but it’s not running anything. (And who would use Win95 as a server?)
[feels stupid] I remembered zip disks but forgot utterly about backing up to an optical drive.
Really, though, if we’re going to be opening the case, just bring a laptop and a universal external drive adapter, rip the HD out of that antique and clone it to your laptop over USB3. Fast, simple, easy, and doesn’t depend on the live CD actually working on an antique.
Without opening the case, I think a parallel port iomega drive (zip and I forget what the other two were called? Jaz and something) is your best bet. Need to have a floppy with drivers for Win 9x, though. Finding 9x drivers would probably be the most time consuming part of any of these backup schemes.
Because just stealing the drive or whole PC would be theft, and even worse: cheating!
Pretty sure the last program run was “Norton Commander”, a shell on top of DOS.
I’m old.
It’s not a server, it’s just a PC for programming the PBX and pulling call logs, voicemail, etc.
Good old bash.org:
<erno> hm. I’ve lost a machine… literally lost. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can’t figure out where in my apartment it is.
Which one? 
Isn’t this a level from the stories untold dlc? Can’t wait to play that!
Miniaturisation?
Or, since that post is pretty old, one fantastically messy apartment.
No driver needed if you just use LapLink, just a nul modem serial cable or special parallel cable and another DOS machine. Maybe not even just DOS.
Oh dear, this takes me back…
Still, LapLink saved the day a couple of times.
This reminds me of a story I read in a Dave Barry book where a woman was getting repeated phone calls from an unknown number (back before cellphones and easy blocking were a thing.)
Turns out they were from another state where a furnace and oil tank had a system in place to call the oil company when it ran low. The company was out of business and the woman later received the same number as her home phone.
She was being harrassed by somebody’s furnace in another state.
At least the furnace wasn’t calling from within the house.
Wait until the IofS gets going for a while and there are forgotten devices all over the place.
And by “Server Room” we mean phone closet.
Bet that computer was used as a serial terminal for that voice mail system.
