If the disk will spin up, and it has a unibus interface, like
a UDA-50, then i would move it to a working 11/44, boot up
unix and make an image copy of the disk and then copy it
over the network to a linux computer.
no doubt a skilled vms person could do the same with vms.
(because, well, how big could the disk image be? :-)
Or you could jam a unibus scsi card in and copy an image of the disk to
a JAZZ drive.
Once the image is on a linux machine you have (as we all know) a large
number of forensic tools... Not the least of which is simh, which you
could possible use to boot the original os. Worst case you should be
able to extract files from the file system with putr or other tools.
heh. send me the disk and I'll take a crack at it.
I think we need a picture of the disk drive to identify what it is.
(and here's to hoping it's not an RP or RM drive :-)
-brad