14 Jul
2001
14 Jul
'01
2:53 a.m.
At 15:16 21-08-2000 -0400, you wrote:
<snip>
The problem with that (yes, I'll try it at some point) is, with MFM, the drive's
format was entirely dependent on what chip the controller was using. If the controller in
the datascope isn't using the same chip as in, say, a WD1003, 1006, or other
controller, I'm pretty much screwed.
Thanks, though. Perhaps I'll get lucky and find that AR used a PC-like format on the
thing. It's certainly from the right era.
Any thoughts
on how I can back this beastie up? Anyone
done anything with this line of datascope?
No experience with this device, but you could try this:
Remove the HD and attached it as the second drive in an
old bootable PC that already has one MFM drive. You'll Then, assuming this datascope doesn't turn out to
be an embedded DOS
machine (and thus the drive formatted as FAT12), use DEBUG under DOS
to load the boot sectors, then write to a .BIN file and set aside.
<snip>
All the above sounds great except for one thing... I lack the experience to translate it
into step-by-step!
If it's loading more than 64k, you could just write
a quick-n-dirty
program using your favorite language (unless that's COBOL!) to read
the datascope code in and store it in a binary file.
Sorry. Won't work in my case. I speak an ancient version of DEC BASIC-PLUS, DOS batch
language, and a tiny bit of shell scripting under AIX. Again, I lack the skill to write
something like you describe.
However, as I said above, you may find this machine is
an embedded
DOS machine, and the drive may already be readable, file by file.
Let's hope so...