Thoughts on a datascope

From: Bruce Lane <kyrrin_at_bluefeathertech.com>
Date: Sat Jul 14 09:53:27 2001

At 15:16 21-08-2000 -0400, you wrote:

>> 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

        <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.

>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...
Received on Sat Jul 14 2001 - 09:53:27 BST