need help with old PC hardware to new PC (any experienced software techs?)
 

hi guys, so our business has an old PC running windows 95, we have a design software from say about 20 years ago as well as the authentication/serial KEY hardware that is plugged into the motherboard in one of the pci slots I believe.

Now I know enough about computers and know exactly how to take everything apart and plug them back in but, is it possible to remove that key and install on a new computer?

This is a risky situation because it takes a very long time to start up the computer and software, if we mess this up, the business can be down for days. How can we copy everything to the new PC and use it as we are now on the old PC? I know there is cloning available but that does not allow things to be used as it were on that computer without the physical hardware that is installed

Its not possible to upgrade the software because there is none available, and the company says if we want a new version of the software we will have to pay thousands. The original paid was 5000$. We are the 3rd person to purchase this used.

Also, what is the best way to work from home? we want to be able to connect and have access to all the files at our business. As of now I can only think of TeamViewer or remote desktop connection through windows.

P.S. the software we need is called wilcom es-25 that we are currently using.

Thanks!

To remotely access files securely set up a VPN.

As for the old computer, you basically want to have this old card in a new computer running W95? In theory it's possible but I would imagine you'd need to spend a lot of time building a specific machine and a lot of time messing with drivers in order to get it to work on modern hardware. I'm sure it could be done but the effort and downtime it might take could cost more than just buying the newer software.

Sounds like you need to justify whether or not the risk of losing several days of business is greater than the cost of upgrading to modern day equipment.

I would think the few thousand dollars it costs to get the software again, with support, and running on newer hardware is more than worth the cost of dealing with the headaches of trying to make things work.

If the upgrade ends up not working, you would have to buy the new software anyways. Why not just shell out the money to get a version that will work on a modern PC with Windows 7 or 10 so all the work from home needs are met right off the bat? Plus that few thousand dollars can be written off at the end anyways/

Maybe. I do freelance IT consulting. Feel free to message me and I'd be happy to swing by for a free consultation. We might be able to figure something out.

so set up vpn while using the remote access from windows?

I will speak to my partner about this first and seek some more options. First things first though, we're still trying to work something out with the company that provided our software and industrial machine that's connected

Ugh, it's a very tight situation we're in. We just invested $58000 into two industrial machines at our building. Right now, we have total of 3 old PCs, one of each with their unique designing software we want onto our new one. We did contact some computer guys in the past that said it could be done but none of them were able to do this task. One little mess up even on the old pc and our work is done for a while.

I can understand your situation. I have a similar scenario at work. From the OP, it looks like you just want to make sure you're not gonna get screwed if/when a computer fails, and you need something to prevent that. There's really no need to upgrade the software if it still can accomplish its tasks.

Do you have a backup of the hard drive? If the system has been running for this long, the most likely point of failure will be the storage. If the hard drive is still good, the slowness can probably be resolved with some basic file maintenance.

Our old system is running XP. My backup plan was not just a clone of the hard drive, but a clone of the entire system. Even if I'm not around, a monkey could just hook up the backup system and be producing widgets within minutes.

You'll need a VPN (virtual private network) to remotely connect from your home computer to the work network, this will allow you to access files that are shared on the network as if you were plugged into the work network. Once you are connected with the VPN you could remote desktop to a particular machine on your office network if you wanted to access programs on it directly.

It sounds like a pretty big risk, unless there's some period of time you're not needing to use this system that you could use to attempt this work. That said even if you do pull this off that authentication hardware is still 20 years old. You could get everything moved over to a new machine just to have the card itself die shortly after.

To be safe I'd find out just how quickly the company that provides this stuff could get you a new one if this doesn't work, maybe even ask them to have one on standby for you to save time if this does go bad. Based on that timeframe figure out if the potential losses are worth the risk.

could you point me towards the right software that might be user friendly for this? So in order to use the Remote desktop access on windows, both our computers, one at work and laptop at home have to have a VPN? Could it be done without one? Would we be able to use all the programs, do design, edit, as well as control the pc as if we were there at the shop?

Someone did create a back up for me before, but I can do it again. All I need is a cloning software correct? how would I go about to upload that back up to run again if say, the windows becomes corrupt or the hard drive dies?

A small chance of this working would be to setup win 95 as a virtual o/s (try to keep the same "hal" power driver type) on a new computer... insert the pci slot authentication (extract old driver and install to new)... and transfer over\overwrite the application folders and registry of the old to the new. 10% chance of this working.

I've used Clonezilla. It's free, and effective.

You need a cloning software clonezilla is one and also an idea of what kind of internals your computer is running, so you can get a matching hard drive.

You also need to make sure the clone is effective with the PCI HASP card. Did the person who backed it up for you, tried to boot from the cloned drive? Backup doesn't mean diddly if it can't boot. I got a feeling the PCI card you are talking about is an AladdinCard? Those are picky.

Old computers running XP you might be using IDE drives instead of SATA. IDE drives are getting hard to find. *IF* you have a IDE drive and depending on the drive size, I would get a IDE -> CF Card convertor and go solid state.

I would suggest you get VPN endpoints eg Sophos Astaro or Cisco ASA

They are hardware solutions that doesn't require you to mess with / configure your XP computer. Your XP computer will just see the network as is and the appliance handles the VPN part. So you can remotely access your work network from anywhere securely. However I think you should consider this issue separate as your old computer issue.

The VPN requires hardware on the office side, the remote machine just needs the software to connect. You'll likely want a hardware firewall on there as well if you're planning on connecting a machine running Windows 95 to the internet. That just gets you connected to the network (it makes it as if you plugged your laptop into the network at your office, without actually being there), if you want to control the PC as if you were there you'd then run a remote desktop while connected with the VPN. It might be laggy depending on the internet connection though.

VPN+RDP is a pretty round-about way of doing what TeamViewer does all in one package. Catch is, it's highly unlikely TeamViewer will run on Win95 (unless you maybe get a really old version of it... MAYBE).

There was a Remote Desktop *client* for Win95 (to connect out to other systems), but I don't recall Win95 ever having an RDP server, and a quick search found this post (from 2005): RDP on Win95 - Windows 95/98/ME - Tom's Hardware

You'll probably need to use something like VNC if you want remote control of that machine, and you don't need to mess around with a VPN for that, you just need to forward a port through the router.

The only reason to bother with a VPN is if you want to access shared drives over the 'net, but if that's ALL you need, then you don't need to mess around with RDP or VNC.

Or get a $50 router, flash it with DD-WRT, and use the VPN server built into that - OP is on a tight budget, remember.

As someone else already mentioned with newer hardware, you're not likely to find anything less than 15 years old that would even have driver support for Win95 - in other words, video would be stuck running in VGA, probably no network driver support, etc.

The system is even older than that, running Win95. It's unlikely an IDE-to-CF setup would work, as hardware that old probably doesn't have BIOS support for booting from flash memory.

As far as IDE drives, I probably have a box of them kicking around somewhere... but a better idea would be to add an IDE-to-SATA adapter and clone the system to an SSD drive. That would definitely speed things up. You could possibly add a PCI SATA card, but I wouldn't bet on Win95 having driver support for that.

Ultimately, I'd have to agree with other comments, that your best bet is to just bite the bullet and upgrade the whole system. You could spend weeks fucking with making this all work, never have it actually happen, and always with the chance it will crash forever, at which point you end up spending the money to upgrade, AND losing those days of productivity until it's done.

You company has enough money to invest into industrial machines on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. But is unwilling to shell out thousands of dollars to modernize the equipment that runs it.

Will the cost of downtime when the computer eventually fails, be equivalent of thousands of dollars that it would cost to upgrade?

The safer bet would just to upgrade the software.

Edit: Just read Soundy's last post. Pretty much what he said.

as an IT consultant myself, i would suggest what everyone else is suggesting and just pay for the upgrade of the system. A few thousand dollars is more than worth several thousands of dollars lost when the system finally hits the fan.

As for working at home, you can get away with pfsense router which can provide VPN access. its free open software and can be ran on almost any old computer you have laying around.

I wouldn't recommend RDP without VPN as I've had to shut down a lot of company's RDP and invest in VPN solutions because of brute force attempts into a users computer.

Shouldn't this be moved to the computer forum?

That is incorrect. CF Flash / PCMCIA is a PATA device. The computer will see it as a IDE drive, you don't need any BIOS changes.

That won't work. The PCI card connects to the embroidery machine. It also acts as a HASP key. A lot of CAM hardware from the turn of the century use that kind of system and it is painful to virtualized.

We have thought of that honestly, it's the specific software from back then that is different from the modern software we like for our products. Its easy to work with. Upgrading would mean we would have to hire someone from the company to come train us with all the new bells and whistles, its complicated process since four people included myself run this shop.. Anyways, I'll have to take pictures of the card, the software and post it up, it'll be easier to solve. Just waiting on email back from support as well to see our options with the newer software.

Do you guys have only one set of the said PC or three?

If there are three, I'd take one offline and have a true pro to work out a solution to upgrade it.

On a serious note though, I used to work as an IT consultant too, my recommendation would be to get in touch with the software company and ask them for a trial of the new version. It has been maybe 20yrs since the software and that's like forever in this business.

I didn't look into detail of the software, but the amount of productivity and performance you guys might be missing is probably far greater than the expense of the upgrade. I'd hire a pro to take a look at it. It's all about analysis of the pros and cons, especially the costs.

Back in my days as a consultant, I always tell my clients... and it's true. The most expensive words in business is "we have been doing this for x amount of time". And as long as the analysis makes sense, it might make sense to take the jump now. Because in another few years, it might become impossible to find replacements and you'd end up doing the same thing anyway.

Yes, I mentioned using the pci card on the new system.

Heres a new strategy.
1 Clone the hard drive
2 Boot cloned hard drive and replace the motherboard drivers (and hal [power drivers]) with what a virtual setup would use.
3 Turn off computer, clone the clone HD into a virtual one.
4 try to boot virtual win95 on the new computer... if it works... add the pci card and see if the embroidery software works.

5 Use team viewer.