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I have a friend who was given a lighting console and was told that the previous owner thought the hard drive was on its way out. We're thinking about trying to replace the drive, the problem being, we need to copy over the OS as well, and there's a really good chance it's not Windows or Linux like most modern lighting desks; it's quite probably something custom. The other problem is this desk is officially obsolete, so the re-imaging kits that used to be available are no longer listed. We'll try to locate one, but not holding out much hope.
So here's the thing. The disk isn't very large (haven't checked but unlikely to be more than 250GB), so a replacement won't cost much, but I'm not sure what the best way would be to, essentially, do a "tape-to-tape" copy of the disk.
Any suggestions?
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There are hard drive reimagers that literally take hard drives in two slots like they were bread in a toaster.
If you want something to produce an exact copy regardless of filesystem, it's a pretty safe bet, as long as your ailing drive survives.
Here's one[^]
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Thanks, I hadn't come across those, and it's certainly an option. I have a SATA docking station, I wonder if there would be a way, with a second docking station, to effectively simulate what this does. Maybe a linux boot and a low level disk operator - does dd do this sort of thing?
Thanks for the pointer, anyway.
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dd might work, but honestly, I'd pay for the hardware for peace of mind. It's so simple it does a sector copy. it doesn't care.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Hiren's boot CD had several possibilities. If the disk is old I would recommend v10.1 or less. Those had the good'ol norton ghost low level version that started to fail at the end of Win7 or with big disks.
I remember an old software too called "Alcohol 120" (120% it burns all) that could do a verbatim copy of disks and drives.
There should actually be a lot of software out there that can cope with it. The only thing I think you should be careful is to do a copy of the whole original disk, if the new device is bigger you can still restore it as a disk and if you really think you need it, to reduce the disk to a partition later and use the extra place for something else.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Clonezilla live CD/USB works here. IIRC, it uses dd.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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honey is dead on, and I've used for decades those devices. But....
I've used disk imagers for almost 20 years. Why? Well, backup systems used to work and then along came UEFI - a complete system abortion if there ever was one. So I want to imaging the drives. These devices do a physical sector by sector copy to a drive AT LEAST AS LARGE AS THE SOURCE. Copying from the source will not harm it. You might have to spend a bit to come up with a solution.
Context: I was (it appears I still am a consultant). I could not honestly charge my customer my time if I lost my hard drive - that's on me. So, typically two hours of downtime paid for all of the hardware. If you are just a consumer that bought something for $0, you might hesitate at buying stuff you will only use once. However, I have a great deal for you. I have both SATA and NVMe disk copiers sitting in my lab - email me, and I'm sure we can work something out. Your only expense would be shipping.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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Alister Morton wrote: Any suggestions?
As the old fool mentioned, just use a tool that does a sector-by-sector copy and you'll be fine. It won't try and translate anything.
The only caveat is you'll want to make sure your partitions are setup the same, specifically with sector sizing. But, I'd imagine most tools should handle that for you. If you're using dd directly though, just something to keep in mind.
Jeremy Falcon
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Ring around, sounds like you are unpunctual, forwarded. (10)
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Circulated ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
modified 14hrs ago.
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That is a pretty good guess.
Does "around" mean "sounds like" ? I thought it was a clue that the text is within the word, like Cir-something-cle.
modified 14hrs ago.
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Sounds like you are unpunctual = u late
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This part was clear. I understood so far the word "around" as : the word along with it would be cut in syllables which would be put "around" the rest of the clue. So in this case "ring around" = "Circle around" = "Cir - rest of the clue - cle". In this case however, "around" means "sounds like". Which I did not expect.
Not only does explaining it break the charm, but it seems that I cannot even bring it to my point.  Silly me  !
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You are absolutely correct in your logic - there was a mistake in the clue
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Ah okay ! Sorry for the question, I am still trying to understand the subtleness of CCCs, so sometimes need an explanation. I managed to solve only one since DD started with them, so I still hope to up the count.
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Ring around, sounds like you are unpunctual, forwarded. (10)
So, when I was starting this out, the thought process was:
Circled was the ring, and it would go around the rest of the answer. That means that Circled should surround the other part of the answer. However, my mistake was dropping the l and e here.
So, with the rest of the answer, Circled would have gone around ulate. That pesky l/e was my blindspot here, if I had left it in, that would be Circlulateed.
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To be honest, I'm surprised you got this because it was a one minute clue and I've just spotted a mistake in it.
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I spotted the mistake and took a guess Pete - ulate and circ gave it away
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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A customer showed me their internal system yesterday.
It runs on an IBM AS/400 and it's written in IBM RPG.
RPG was originally developed in 1959, but the latest stable version is from 2020.
I must say it looks surprisingly modern: Coding in RPG IV - a beginner's tutorial[^]
Not sure if that's also the version of RPG that their software is programmed in, but I'm guessing it isn't as it's 40-something years old.
Other than that it looks like a fancy DOS program (colored letters on a white background, so no retro black/green, and completely keyboard driven, although mouse works too).
Apparently, they've been trying to replace it for 25 years, but without much success.
Meanwhile it's still actively being developed and their supplier has a development team just for this client (all other customers switched to the newer version of the product).
My client is now looking into buying the entire product just so they can keep using it 
They could buy the product, but the programmers are of course in no way obliged to move with the software.
My guess is they'll HAVE TO replace it in the coming ten years or so and it would be better to start working on a replacement NOW rather than buy something that's already obsolete.
But just out of curiosity, how many here worked on RPG and how many still do, could and/or want to?
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I have worked for a short period on a IBM S/36 with RPG II some 30 odd years ago.
Forgot all about it besides the fact that it looked a lot like assembler and after checking your link doesn't even remotely resemble RPG IV.
After some 4 months I switched to the client side development which was done in Clipper 5 synchronising data with the S/36.
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Loved Clipper - my first paying language
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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My dad won't shut up about how great Clipper was and that everything that came after it is just a rip off 
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