VOGONS


First post, by Ryccardo

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Trying to remember something I accidentally found online about a decade ago, and even then it was old stock at liquidation prices 😀

This product would technically be a card but I'm fairly sure it only was a ROM and all the magic was in software (probably DOS/9x and FAT-centric);
basically it made a copy of your "HDD" on another partition, hid it with a custom int13 driver almost like an HPA, and on demand or every boot it would restore the image so that you'd have a clean and known starting condition...

What was this called? (tried to search for variations of "isa backup card" with no real success)
And of course: did it really work with a contemporary OS, and is it terribly broken with anything else?

Thanks in advance 😀

Reply 1 of 2, by oLdStuffUser

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in germany we used "PC Wächter" from "Dr. Kaiser" in schools or internet cafe´s back then to revert every change people did during use back to its original state after a reboot.
There are ISA PCI and PCIe cards available.

You install your system -> insert the card -> "lock" the HDD with a program and thats it.

Reply 2 of 2, by Jo22

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Did it really work? 😆

I think. I've got one of them in by parts bin.

Back in ~200x, we had Windows 2000 PCs at "school".
They booted completely via LAN.
10min boot up time and after reboot, everything was lost.
What a great "Musterlösung". We students hated it.
Communication via NET SEND was fun, though! 😁

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