Larry, I'm sorry to hear about both your health and personal issues. Unfortunately, life sometimes has a way of kicking us right in the teeth when we least expect it. I've maintained a DX Cluster for the past 30 years, so I speak as a fellow Sysop. I think it's time to shutdown the node and try to enjoy the rest of your years without that added responsibility. Let's weigh the Pros and Cons of your situation: PRO - would like to keep serving the amateur community. CON - don't have much time to devote to maintaining your cluster. CON - "dinosaur" Windows 2000 (32 bit) CON - "ancient" DX Spider V 1.55 build 0.82 (current v 1.57 build 633) When I logged into your cluster, there were 10 users and THREE of them were you! With the advent of high speed internet (versus local/regional RF links), most nodes have the ability to receive and broadcast worldwide spots today. In addition, you are connected to SEVEN partner nodes. This is total overkill and most likely overloading your Dell 100 MHz Pentium, especially during contests! Another tidbit, I counted a minimum of 10 other nodes on the master list located in North Carolina. Which doesn't mean much, since all internet connections are so robust. If you turned off your node tomorrow, your users would have several dozen other nodes to choose from via telnet. I applaud you for the dedication it takes to keep the K2LS Node available over the past 20 years, but I think your users should have no issues with you retiring. Good luck in the future and thank you for the years of service to the amateur community. 73, Steve - AA4U On 3/4/2026 2:31 PM, Larry Strasser via Dxspider-support wrote:
Hey guys...I have been running PERL/Spider for over 20 years
on an old DELL 100Mhz Pentium.
Original installation on Windows 2000, yes Windows 2000.
Charlie Carrol K1XX, set this up for me when I lived in NY.
Dirk has be helpful in the past but I guess he doesn't want to deal with an old installation.
My problem is it keeps crashing randomly. Dirk repaired this last year by running a command to either clean or repair a file. After that it ran for almost a year ,when it when it went bad again. Unfortunately, I'm not in the best of health with both Pancreatic and Lung cancer. Now I'm also taking care of my XYL (K2VCS), who is being treated for bone cancer. So, I don't have much time to devote to this.
I have and would like to keep serving the amateur DX community.
Is there some way one of you can connect to my old Windows 2000 installation and help repair the installation please?
Contact me @ K2LSLARRY@GMAIL.COM
It would be greatly appreciated.
7 Larry K2LS DXC.K2LS.COM
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