Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini]

On 17/04/2021 18:03, Zane Healy wrote:
> On Apr 17, 2021, at 9:24 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk 
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>>
>> If anyone has any suggestions for how to clean CDs to recover data, 
>> I'm all ears.
>
> Do you have access to a Record Store that deals in used CDs?  I know 
> one of our local ones used to have  a machine for resurfacing CDs, at 
> the time, I didn’t need to make use of the service.  Another option 
> might be used Video Game stores.


Thanks for that, I didn't realise that such a service even existed. 
There's a GAME in the Westgate in Oxford and the GAME website mentions 
CD cleaning for games, so I might call and check to see if they have the 
machine. £3 per disc, so it perhaps might be worth trying on one. When I 
hold the CD up to the light there are definite pin pricks where I can 
see the light shining through so I rather suspect that there are some 
points that are unrecoverable. So maybe not.


I also happened across two youtube videos 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpcd-5fd9nY and 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNV7mDfWuWI) where people do the same 
sort of thing by hand. I happen to have some 3000 grit wet-and-dry 
available. I might have a go at that too, although I think I should find 
a data CD that I don't care about, rough it up and see if I can "unrough 
it up". Pity I threw away all those AOL CDs years ago :-) Actually, I 
suspect I have a number of duplicate MSDN CDs, so those might do for 
experimentation.


So far I've just tried using dd to recover the data but perhaps I should 
try to find something that won't give up when the OS reports an 
unreadable sector. Anyone have any suggestions?


Thanks


Antonio


-- 
Antonio Carlini
antonio at acarlini.com