ST Syquest HD Conversion Help Needed

[RayCox]

Hope this isn't off topic, but I need help with the following problem. I have a Syquest EZ135 drive and cartridge which was used for many years with a 1040 ST. Now the Atari is dead and I need to get the files off of the Syquest cartridge and onto a Windows PC. I have hooked the Syquest to a Windows PC using a USB2SCSI converter. Windows sees the converter and the EZ135 drive, but obviously can't see the files and always wants to reformat the disk since it doesn't recognize that there is data on it.

 

There are many programs out there which do an admirable job of reading Atari formatted floppies and converting them to disk images or even copying them over to a Windows based system, but after trying about everything I could find online, none of them will recognize that the Syquest and cartridge are Atari formatted media.

 

If anyone has found a program which will recognize an Atari formatted removable HD cartridge as in this situation or has any suggestions on how I can get the files from the cartridge to the Windows computer, I would appreciate hearing your ideas or experiences.

 

Thanks,

 

Ray

[ggn]

If you can make a dump of the syquest (I think winhex can do this, I just saw the option in the program but I didn't test it) into a file, then there's a big chance that you can mount that image into aranym or something similar and extract the files.

 

HTH

[ppera]

There is a tool for that. But works only under Windows XP or Linux.

Windows 2000 will work too, and I had posting with one man with Syquest drive who managed to backup all files from to PC (after I made some add-ons in program).

 

http://www.ppest.org/zx/drimus.php

 

If you have WIndows 98, then you may try with Gemulator Explorer.

[+CyranoJ]

Or you could just try FDISK... theres a 50/50 chance it'll end the same way

[ppera]

Or you could just try FDISK... theres a 50/50 chance it'll end the same way

 

 

There is a 0% chance that your post is not SPAM.

Make fun yourself on some other place...

This man asked for help, not for BS.

[+CyranoJ]

Oh i'm sorry.

 

Are we not allowed to have fun or offer another perspective here? (Like, eg, we know for a fact your app has wiped out at least one partition without warning)

 

It might be the greatest thing ever, but it didnt work for us and he DESERVES to know what it might do to his obviously valuable data.

 

There is a 0% chance you might realise this one day.

[+poobah]

Just a thought....

 

There's at least a couple ST'ers with working machines that have EZ135 drives (I have one on my Falcon)

 

I'd be happy to move the contents of the disk onto a cd-rom for you.

 

-Ken

[ppera]

It was told here couple times that this is not place for discussion about certain programs and their bugs.

 

If ggn and his friend Cyrano would really care about people they should write me some bug report, or at least ask that police close down my site

Instead, we have just some insinuations periodically in some threads about data retrieving.

 

This forum is not much visited. After such threads as this will be even less - people wants some help, not insinuations.

 

So, please remove crap from here...

[+DarkLord]

Just a thought....

 

There's at least a couple ST'ers with working machines that have EZ135 drives (I have one on my Falcon)

 

I'd be happy to move the contents of the disk onto a cd-rom for you.

 

-Ken

 

Ditto here - I've got a working EZ135 on my Mega ST that runs my BBS.

 

One of us would be glad to help you out.

 

PS BTW, IIRC, you could have just left the EZ cart formatted as is, and

not formatted under Atari... I believe I did this with one of my carts - I was

able to swap back and forth between my Atari and a friends PC. (or am I

thinking of something else)? It's been years since I tried that though.

[+poobah]

Just a thought....

 

There's at least a couple ST'ers with working machines that have EZ135 drives (I have one on my Falcon)

 

I'd be happy to move the contents of the disk onto a cd-rom for you.

 

-Ken

 

Ditto here - I've got a working EZ135 on my Mega ST that runs my BBS.

 

One of us would be glad to help you out.

 

PS BTW, IIRC, you could have just left the EZ cart formatted as is, and

not formatted under Atari... I believe I did this with one of my carts - I was

able to swap back and forth between my Atari and a friends PC. (or am I

thinking of something else)? It's been years since I tried that though.

 

I haven't had any luck doing that, then again, the EZ135 I had in the PC was an IDE model, the Falcon one is an external SCSI.

[+DarkLord]

I haven't had any luck doing that, then again, the EZ135 I had in the PC was an IDE model, the Falcon one is an external SCSI.

 

Hmm, as far as the carts themselves go, I wouldn't think

that the drive itself being IDE or SCSI would make any

difference. I might be totally wrong, but I just wouldn't

think so...

[marcfrick2112]

I haven't had any luck doing that, then again, the EZ135 I had in the PC was an IDE model, the Falcon one is an external SCSI.

 

Hmm, as far as the carts themselves go, I wouldn't think

that the drive itself being IDE or SCSI would make any

difference. I might be totally wrong, but I just wouldn't

think so...

 

I am almost positive that it doesn't matter if the drive itself is IDE or SCSI.... I am an Amiga person myself (no jokes, please ) and I know for a fact that Amiga users would e.g. transfer files between an internal IDE zip drive on a PC to an external SCSI Zip drive on Amiga...

[ppera]

Why bother with suggestions?

The problem is trivial.

 

RayCox will probably never come back here...

Thanks for idiot spammers and forum staff which ignores his own rules...

 

It sucks here!

[+DarkLord]

It sucks here!

 

Well...just my 2 cents worth, but I actually think this

is a pretty cool place for Atari people to hang out.

[ggn]

Well...just my 2 cents worth, but I actually think this

is a pretty cool place for Atari people to hang out.

 

I second that, with the exception of some people whining and shouting like they own the place

[RayCox]

Sorry about my temporary disappearance. I had to leave for a 3 day conference over the weekend and didn't give myself the luxury of online contact during that time, not to mention the lack of time to try your suggestions. I will attempt to catch everyone up with my experience with the useful suggestions:

 

HTH - I appreciate your recommendation of Winhex. I did have to purchase it, as the free/trial version would not transfer over 200K or some such limit, but it was the first piece of software that I had been able to find (been working on this problem for about a month now) that would actually access and find anything on the disk. Although it would not show individual files or anything really useful above the hex level, I was able to make an image file with it of the complete disk. This gave me confidence to try other things, as I now had a backup of everything on the disk in case I made the wrong move in my attempts to extract. This is a very interesting and capable piece of software for the price if one is having any kind of problems with a HD and needs to try to save what is on there.

 

Space Invader - Your suggestion to try the Drive Image program was the answer! I had tried GEM Explorer, and it was great for transferring files from even Atari-formatted floppies, but it wouldn't touch the Syquest drive/HD combination. It is advertised as being able to recognize Atari SCSI hard drives, but I suspect it was being fooled by the USB converter I am using, and didn't "see" any SCSI devices. I wrote to the author of GEM Explorer for suggestions on getting around my theory of the problem, but no response as of now. Drive Image had no problem with the disk image file which I had already extracted. It showed 7 partitions, 99 directories, and over 2500 files, all of which I successfully extracted (with much help from the "Select All" feature, which would allow a one-step extraction of a complete partition with all directories and files intact in their original trees and configurations.

 

I greatly appreciate the offers of Ken, Dragonstomper, and maybe others who offered the use of their EZ135 drives to extract the files. That is obviously not necessary now. I had considered that option as choice #3 or 4 as I researched ways to get the files, but was very uneasy about letting loose of the only copies of the files that I had without any kind of backup.

 

Anyway...the Atari data is moving forward to a new platform and hopefully won't get caught in obsolecense again.

 

Thanks again for your willingness to help.

 

Ray

[ggn]

HTH - I appreciate your recommendation of Winhex. I did have to purchase it, as the free/trial version would not transfer over 200K or some such limit, but it was the first piece of software that I had been able to find (been working on this problem for about a month now) that would actually access and find anything on the disk. Although it would not show individual files or anything really useful above the hex level, I was able to make an image file with it of the complete disk. This gave me confidence to try other things, as I now had a backup of everything on the disk in case I made the wrong move in my attempts to extract. This is a very interesting and capable piece of software for the price if one is having any kind of problems with a HD and needs to try to save what is on there.

 

HTH = Hope this helps, my nick is on top of the post

 

Oops, I didn't remember that the shareware version had such a limitation, sorry . However I'm glad you got to use the full version to make an image, as this program helped me a LOT during these kinds of situations.

 

Anyway, I'm glad it all worked out in the end.

 

George

[ppera]

...Space Invader - Your suggestion to try the Drive Image program was the answer! I had tried GEM Explorer, and it was great for transferring files from even Atari-formatted floppies, but it wouldn't touch the Syquest drive/HD combination. It is advertised as being able to recognize Atari SCSI hard drives, but I suspect it was being fooled by the USB converter I am using, and didn't "see" any SCSI devices. I wrote to the author of GEM Explorer for suggestions on getting around my theory of the problem, but no response as of now. Drive Image had no problem with the disk image file which I had already extracted. It showed 7 partitions, 99 directories, and over 2500 files, all of which I successfully extracted (with much help from the "Select All" feature, which would allow a one-step extraction of a complete partition with all directories and files intact in their original trees and configurations.

 

 

Space Invader - this is rank in forum, not user name

 

GEM Explorer: is it maybe Gemulator Explorer? Don't waste time with it under Win XP. Don't waste time with writing to Darek Mihocka (author). It is discontinued program now. Was good for Win 98.

 

Interesting is how people fraids from so called 'home-made programs', and believes in some 'pro, firmed' programs.

But I can tell ya that I had troubles with Partition Magic, some Linux distros - they messed up my partition table.

Norton Utilities Disc Doctor when I asked to repair some directories simple deleted them all...

Btw. imaging itself takes max 20% of code in Drive Imager, what is in fact very simple. Most of code is for file transfer.

'Select all' feature I added on request of another Syquest owner.

Edited March 26, 2007 by ppera