When I disconnect the PATA drives, it just boots into the newly
installed WinXP, without the Grub menu.

I haven't tried with just the Ubuntu 8.04 drive. I'll have to do some
more experiments with various drives connected, and will let you know
the results.

The e-mail & news client is ZIMACS. It was specific to my original ISP
Zetnet, and is not compatable with any other system. In the days of
dial-up it was particularly useful as messages were compressed before
transmission.

Unfortunatly, two years ago Zetnet was taken over by another ISP which
killed off Zimacs and lost most of its loyal & happy customers. Many had
been with them for up to 15 years. It also had a strong social side,
which still continues through a member's website.

AFAIK there isn't any easy way to export mail from ZIMACS, into a format
which could be read by modern e-mail program.