Downgrade for Running on Vintage Systems

[RetroViator]

Hi, I'm a longtime follower of Steve's work, but first-time buyer of SpinRite.

I need to run SpinRite on an old PC... like an early Pentium with 32MB of RAM. The system happily boots the floppy image, but I'm sad to report that I'm greeted with a flashing screen telling me the system, "lacks sufficient memory to run SpinRite with large buffers." Perhaps SpinRite 5 would meet my unusual needs. Does anyone know if it's possible to run older versions of SpinRite? I realize my serial number is hard-coded into the version I downloaded, so this might not be possible.

 

[ColbyBouma]

Follow the steps at the bottom of the FAQ, but use sr50.exe or sr60.exe.

https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

 

[RetroViator]

Follow the steps at the bottom of the FAQ, but use sr50.exe or sr60.exe.

https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

Thank you very much! I obviously was not a careful reader all the way to the end of the FAQ. I’ll give that a try.

 

[RetroViator]

Follow the steps at the bottom of the FAQ, but use sr50.exe or sr60.exe.

https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

I followed the instructions in the FAQ and was greeted with a message saying:

The file you are attempting
to download is unknown

I used sr5.exe as described in the FAQ. However, when I used sr50.exe, as you recommended, it worked great!

 

[ZZWolf47]

I feel that we that have purchased Spinrite whatever version should be able to download all older versions. Some systems in the past are STILL running. Computers in the the past, present, and in the future will need Spinrite. With each version features are added and some removed. The added features make Spinrite even more AWESOME. The removed features are sometimes why we purchased SpinRite in the first place.

 

[DanR]

I feel that we that have purchased Spinrite whatever version should be able to download all older versions.

You can do this!

Go here: https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

A little over 1/3 of the way down look for the section titled "How can SpinRite v6.1 owners obtain v6.0 or v5.0?"

To obtain and download SpinRite v5.0 or v6.0 instead of v6.1, all you need to do is change the filename in the software download link from “spinrite.exe” to “sr5.exe” or “sr6.exe”. Full instructions are in the FAQ.

 

[peterblaise]

Yes, ALL prior SpinRite versions have features and benefits that may
have been deprecated as new features and benefits are added to
new versions.

Hence I have ALL version on my boot drives, but some configuration
changes are necessary for earliest versions to not be obstructed by
modern memory management in CONFIG.SYS, or even the DOS
version, so I also swap CONFIG.SYS files around, or just keep old
MS-DOS versions on their own.

Even when planning to run SpinRite 6.1, a revisit to SpinRite 5
reveals a lot about the computer itself.

Also note that MSD Microsoft System Diagnostics versions 1, 2, 3
and other utilities can be helpful in reminding ourselves what's
what in our old legacy systems.

https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-diagnostic/5x

I have hundreds of diagnostic utility programs on my SpinRite
boot drives, including good old Norton, PCTools, QEMM, and so on.

- - - - -

"... change the filename in the software download link from
“spinrite.exe” to “sr5.exe” or “sr6.exe" ..."

Try SR50.EXE and SR60.EXE.

 

[ZZWolf47]

Thank you for the reply and the help. I needed a version that still supported tape and floppy disks on a UEFI system as well with the features of SpinRite 6.1. I Shown my age by saying floppy disks(34 pin OR USB) and tape as SpinRite works awesome in the past with those as well as using, HDD's and SSD's in the same system.

 

[DanR]

I needed a version that still supported tape and floppy disks on a UEFI system

Sadly, you are out of luck. Current and past versions of SpinRite are NOT compatible with UEFI systems.

Perhaps, someday, we will have SpinRite 7 with UEFI compatibility.

 

[ColbyBouma]

Thank you for the reply and the help. I needed a version that still supported tape and floppy disks on a UEFI system as well with the features of SpinRite 6.1. I Shown my age by saying floppy disks(34 pin OR USB) and tape as SpinRite works awesome in the past with those as well as using, HDD's and SSD's in the same system.

SpinRite 5 works great with floppy disks, but as far as I'm aware, no version of SpinRite has ever supported tape drives. Also, I believe you can request versions older than 5 by contacting GRC support.

 

[Scott]

Sadly, you are out of luck. Current and past versions of SpinRite are NOT compatible with UEFI systems.

Unless you run SpinRite in a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or QEMU, in which case you can run SpinRite and access all drives on a UEFI system.

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-run-spinrite-on-a-uefi-only-machine-part-1-of-5.1613/

 

[ZZWolf47]

Hopefully they will add floppy drive and tape drive support on the next edition of UEFI SpinRite. I bought this wonderful software because of the floppy support and what it can do(and did). Floppy and Tape are a air-gap solutions. Tapes are a great way to back up. Can not hack a floppy and/or tape when not in drive.

 

[ColbyBouma]

I am 100% certain that floppy drive support will not be added to any future version of SpinRite. Steve intentionally removed it when he was developing version 6.1. If you need to run SpinRite on a floppy, download version 5 and run it on an old computer.

I don't know if Steve would consider adding tape support in the future, but I highly doubt it. Tape works very differently from hard drives and SSDs.

 

[PHolder]

tape support

There would seem little value in SpinRite for tape. Tape is generally not used for online storage, so when you bring it online, it's likely you're either restoring a backup, or you're about to rewrite the tape with a new backup. If you have a problem reading the tape during a restore, you better hope that there was enough redundancy written to recover from it, for that was its sole purpose for existing. This would mean highly proprietary design most likely, and not something standardized to the level that the ATA spec has been.