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The Icon Bar: General: Dead RPC's - retrieving anything
 
  Dead RPC's - retrieving anything
  Wrath (19:31 18/3/2014)
  richw (20:19 18/3/2014)
    Wrath (21:08 18/3/2014)
      Phlamethrower (22:07 18/3/2014)
        richw (22:39 18/3/2014)
          Wrath (18:40 19/3/2014)
            richw (20:12 19/3/2014)
            Phlamethrower (20:28 19/3/2014)
              MarkieMark (11:00 20/3/2014)
              Wrath (15:55 23/3/2014)
                Wrath (15:17 29/3/2014)
  CJE (12:08 20/3/2014)
    HeathHayle (20:36 17/4/2014)
      CJE (10:40 22/4/2014)
 
Nathan Message #123133, posted by Wrath at 19:31, 18/3/2014
Member
Posts: 154
Now then people. I suspect there isn't an easy way but wanted to test you bright sparks.

I have dug out my two RPCs and A4000 (Fednet's A4000 to be specific) and decided to fire them up. All do technically switch on, however, I think the CMOS battery has rusted on both RPCs as nothing appears onscreen despite the lights being on. The A4000, despite not having a mouse, seems to work although I suspect the hard drive is knackered.

Anyway, I'd like to know if the harddrives of all three do work. Is there any way I can access RO hard drives via Windows?
  ^[ Log in to reply ]
 
Richard Walker Message #123134, posted by richw at 20:19, 18/3/2014, in reply to message #123133
Member
Posts: 66
Yes. I did the same last year. Stupidly, I did not write it down!

I used an IDE to USB adaptor, and a free utility to write the sectors from the disk into an image file (like dd on Linux). After some adjustment, the image file worked in RPCEmu, so I had a clone of my Risc PC!

This was useful:
http://www.riscos.info/pipermail/rpcemu/2011-March/001261.html
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Nathan Message #123135, posted by Wrath at 21:08, 18/3/2014, in reply to message #123134
Member
Posts: 154
Thanks. Glad it's possible. I'll start off with the adapter to make sure they physically work. Have to find a Windows sector cloner (any ideas)? Not sure if stuff like Macrium will work.
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Jeffrey Lee Message #123136, posted by Phlamethrower at 22:07, 18/3/2014, in reply to message #123135
PhlamethrowerHot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100
Have to find a Windows sector cloner (any ideas)?
Win32DiskImager is a fairly straightforward tool that's popular for cloning SD cards and the like. I'm not 100% sure if it works with USB hard drives, but I'd assume it would.
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Richard Walker Message #123137, posted by richw at 22:39, 18/3/2014, in reply to message #123136
Member
Posts: 66
That sounds familiar - I think I used that.

My image was 4GB, andi had to find a decent hex editor to manipulate the checksums so that it would work in RPCEmu. See my link above for theory.
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Nathan Message #123138, posted by Wrath at 18:40, 19/3/2014, in reply to message #123137
Member
Posts: 154
Just getting to grips with RPCEmu. Need to get an adapter and then will image but, sadly, Hugo Fiennes link comes across to me as gobbledegook so not sure I'd be able to go much further.

Maybe a daft question but once (if I get that far!) I have a raw image, how do I get RPCEmu to open it?
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Richard Walker Message #123142, posted by richw at 20:12, 19/3/2014, in reply to message #123138
Member
Posts: 66
RPCEmu has a config file which specifies the file names of the emulated hard disks (hd4 and hd5). They will appear as IDE disks to the emulated Risc PC.

When you get an adaptor and manage to image the disk to a file, let us know.
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Jeffrey Lee Message #123143, posted by Phlamethrower at 20:28, 19/3/2014, in reply to message #123138
PhlamethrowerHot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100
I would have thought Hugo's steps would have only applied to images taken from SCSI drives, but it looks like they're necessary for IDE drives as well. A while ago I replaced my RiscPC's hard disc with a CF card, and decided to take an image (of the CF card) at the same time. Most likely I used Win32DiskImager for this. I haven't actually tried using the image until now, but it does look like Hugo's steps (prepend a blank sector and then fix up the boot block) are necessary.

I've attached a Windows build of Hugo's "chk" utility, and a blank sector file. Once you have your image you should be able to patch it up by opening a command prompt and entering the following:
copy /B blanksector + img hd4.hdf
chk.exe

(assuming your image is called 'img') That will produce hd4.hdf which is the default hard disc image name RPCEmu looks for.

One extra problem you might run into is that use of hard disc images under RISC OS 5 is currently disabled within RPCEmu due to a data loss bug. So you'll want to use some 3.7 or 4.x ROMs instead of a RISC OS 5 one (Although you'd probably want to stick to 3.7/4.x anyway as I doubt many of the programs on those machines would work under RISC OS 5!)
fiximage.zip 14.9KB
fiximage.zip
14.9KB

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Mark Usher Message #123147, posted by MarkieMark at 11:00, 20/3/2014, in reply to message #123143
Member
Posts: 9
Is there a way to get this back, ie. write a RPC image to a SD Card / drive?
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Chris Evans Message #123149, posted by CJE at 12:08, 20/3/2014, in reply to message #123133
CJE Micros chap
Posts: 228
You'll probably find it a lot easier to get a Pi, run RISC OS on it and connect with the IDE to USB!
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Nathan Message #123159, posted by Wrath at 15:55, 23/3/2014, in reply to message #123143
Member
Posts: 154
Cheers for the help Jeffrey. Managed to get the A4000 to work without a problem, just needed some contacts cleaning. I then fiddled with and succeeding in getting one of the RPCs off the ground and the Harddrive contains a copy of the A4000 drive which helps.

Sadly, my main RPC is pretty dead as the motherboard has corrosion all over it. Additionally the harddrive doesn't show any signs of life so has a PCB failure. From looking on the Internet it seems the physical swapping of the PCB is easy but getting the right one is very problematic.

Anyway, I'm going to use my Mum's old base, burn an image from the working one and see if I can get that transferred into the emulator.
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Nathan Message #123173, posted by Wrath at 15:17, 29/3/2014, in reply to message #123159
Member
Posts: 154
Success! Cheers Richard and Jeffrey, got the old Fednet stuff onto the PC and working fine. Sadly I couldn't get my personal harddrive working and then discovered Fujitsu made a faulty batch of this is one. Managed to get another HD which was largely the same, swapped the PCBs but although it spins, it couldn't understand it. I've since discovered someone in the US with a near identical one (just the ID code is different). Don't suppose anyone knows of a harddrive recovery company that knows what an Acorn is?
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David Heath Message #123200, posted by HeathHayle at 20:36, 17/4/2014, in reply to message #123149
Member
Posts: 147
You'll probably find it a lot easier to get a Pi, run RISC OS on it and connect with the IDE to USB!
Oh does that work? Good to know!
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Chris Evans Message #123205, posted by CJE at 10:40, 22/4/2014, in reply to message #123200
CJE Micros chap
Posts: 228
You'll probably find it a lot easier to get a Pi, run RISC OS on it and connect with the IDE to USB!
Oh does that work?
Yesbig smile
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The Icon Bar: General: Dead RPC's - retrieving anything