PowerEdge SC600 memory upgrade 1719

Yep. sounds like a typical encounter with a small company that runs specialized software.

There was probably no comercial software avaiable at the right price that did what they needed, or one of the employee's decides that they have played with some programming language and they figure they can write it themselves.

They end up with a piece of software that mostly works, with only a few bugs here and there.

Typically the 'programmer' writes the basic package, desn't comment his code, doesn't write any kind of users manual, etc, and he's the only person that knows the in's and outs of the software.

Then one day he's not around anymore.

etc, etc...

Or the software gets written to do what it needs to do and that's it. The programmer moves on to other projects....

In the meantime, time has pbutted, hardware-software has evolved and the customer now has new equipment with new OS on it. Now the software doesn't work right. Unfortunatly even if they can find the original programmer, odds are the only way the programmer is going to be able to figure out the problem is for him to remember his old code, load it onto a system comparable to what the customer has now, then start to investigate the problem.

Unfortunatly for the customer, the programmer will demand to do this on a T&M basis and the customer will choke on the amount it will cost for the programmer to find the problem.

This is all part of the price you pay when going to custom software...

The customer's business might only be 6 people in a room somewhere running the program tracking-controlling an entire fleet of trucks, but they have been running for so long on a handful of old PC's running Windows 98 with the software working 'OK' that they choke when it's time to replace the old tired equipment with more modern systems.

Sticker shock, for a small company with a small budget.

yep. Been there many times.

Sounds like the Trash software is meant more for a Workgroup than a Network.

Maybe, as strange as it may be, things would be best if they went back to running the Trash software on a healthy desktop loaded with Windows 98 like they used to.

Or would it be possible to move them back to running it off a Win98 'Server' long enough for you to re-configure thier Dell Server?