Limits
I am by nature helpful, and enjoy problem solving, so if presented with a challenging problem that requires certain quirky things to be fixed before you can get down to the main issue that's fine.
But there are limits, and frankly this guy spent far more time on the work than I would of done.
At the point where it turned out that both the old and new servers were all fried, and that even the "new" server was ancient I would have been declaring the situation 99% likely unrecoverable and telling the company to find a plan B.
Sure it may have been possible (as indeed it was) to get a new server and configure Netware on it.
It may even have been possible to type in all 2000 pages of source code by hand, to recompile the software. But even then there is no guarantee the data is still intact.
Sometimes, regardless of the money on offer, it simply isn't worth the time or psychological trauma to put that kind of work in for people who have no concept of how to run a business properly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
