Hello Michael,
1. run 'dd' on the old computer's disk and transfer the output to a disk image file in a modern computer. How to do it depends upon ability to connect external hardware (such as a network card, a disk with modern interface, or a DiskOnKey).
2. Write down old computer's BIOS settings having to do with hardware configuration.
3. Write down which peripherals your old computer has and their configuration (such as interrupt number and I/O address).
4. Check your virtual machine hypervisor's configuration options to see how to configure your virtual machine to emulate the exact same hardware. Consult your records of BIOS settings and peripherals.
5. In your new computer, loop-mount the disk image file and configure the virtual machine to access it. See, for example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/316401/how-to-mount-a-disk-image-fr...
Remember that old Linux versions (1.*, 2.*) are not as smart in auto- discovery of hardware configurations as more recent ones.
More precise instructions depend upon the exact hardware and Linux version you have.
United, we shall win, --- Omer Zak
On Sat, 2023-11-04 at 11:34 +0400, Michael Shiloh wrote:
Hello all,
Situation: We have a linux computer with various software installed on old hardware that may malfunction and be unsupported. To mitigate this risk, we would like to make an image of this machine so that we can run it in a virtual machine.
How do we do this?