486 Data Recovery with MSBACKUP and NetWare // Intel Professional Workstation (Part 2) | #DOScember
934In the continuing saga of getting my ailing EISA-based Intel Professional Workstation up and running again, I've continued on a two steps forward, one step back sort of progress. To actually dump the hard drive off this system, I needed Novell NetWare, MSBACKUP, and some custom written utilities that could save a raw disk dump from DOS. This is probably overkill, but as they say, if its worth doing, its worth overdoing!
Timestamps of note:
0:00 - Intro/Recap
1:00 - Full System Specifications and Current State
2:20 - Diagnosing the Dead Floppy Drive
4:24 - Disk Drive Testing and Troubles
5:36 - Interlink Discussions and Goof-up
6:08 - New Dallas Module
7:55 - Memory Testing Problems
9:42 - EISA Configuration Utility
11:08 - Data Recovery Plan, MSBACKUP, and Novell NetWare
14:03 - The Archive Bit Problem
15:15 - Restoring the Backup
15:40 - Writing a DOS based Disk Dumper
16:12 - Linux NFS Root Attempts
17:30 - Coding DISKDUMP.EXE, Dumping the Disk, and Verification
18:41 - Conclusions and Sign-Off
Disk Dumper Git Repos:
* DISKDUMP: https://github.com/NCommander/dos_disk_dumper
* SERDUMP: https://github.com/NCommander/serial_dumper
As I would find out shortly after Part 1, the disk drive on this 486 was essentially kaput, and it was showing very odd that made it appear like it was a low destiny floppy drive. After trying to disassemble the drive, I had a scare when it died entirely before I could nurse it back to health.
Even after solving that, I would find that muggins here had ordered the wrong parts, and even after replacing the Dallas clock chip, it would still be quite a bit of effort to actually get the hard drive saved.
That lead to a magical world of EISA configuration utilities, unlikely finds on the Internet Archive, and a dive into MS-DOS's integrated backup utility. Afterwards, I realize I would need to write a custom utility after trying to run Linux was essentially out of the question.
Social Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FOSSfirefighter
Discord: https://discord.gg/V8esNah
Blog: https://casadevall.pro/
Music is from http://www.epidemicsound.com, with the following tracks used in order:
- How To Go On (Instrumental Version) - Mike Parr
- Fog Lake - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- Cryptic Secrecy - Dream Cave
- City Phases - John Abbot
- Travels in Time - Experia
- This Is Our Hut - Trabant 33
- It Can Be Done - Airae
- Valiant - Dream Cave
- Let Go of Fear - Howard Harper-Barnes
- At Evenfall - Howard Harper-Barnes
- Where It Started - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- Secret Agents - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- To the Last Man - Jon Bjork
Although not planned as part of #DOScember, this video comes at the end of December 2020, and is well timed with that so I've placed this video under that tag. It's amazing that the retro tech community has come together to help celebrate DOS, and the legacy it left on the computing world.
Intel referred to this system as the LP486E, and that name is used on several of the drivers and the label under the case. It's also the search term required to find any information on this video.