Thoughts on a datascope

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Mon Aug 21 14:16:05 2000

> 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
need to get the drive parameters for the drive entered
into the CMOS; I think I used to use SpeedStor (?) for
that. Other utilities exist.

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.
Load the partition table (assuming it has one) and save it. Do a quick-
n-dirty disassembly of the boot code to see where it runs off to (that
is what it loads from the drive), and if it's loading less than 64k,
you should be able to do this easily in DEBUG.

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.

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.

hth,
-doug q
Received on Mon Aug 21 2000 - 14:16:05 BST