have I killed it?

Hello folks. I have recently acquired two Amiga 4000's, one a 030, t'other a 040. They are not mine. Their owner died, and him being a writer, quite well-known in Christian circles, his wife wants to gather up all his works before disposing of the machines he has used for so many years.
We don't know if there is anything worth keeping on the hard drives, but it is likely as he was using a Sinclair QL , an Amstrad and a Genie (not all at the same time mind) before the Amigas came into his possession.

Well, first off, although the machines power up, I couldn't get anything else to happen, even when we finally located a Workbench disk. Nothing, just a grey screen. Then we peered inside and saw that on one of the machines, the two batteries were badly corroded.

A helpful guy from another forum suggested that if all I wanted was the data off the HD's, WUAE was the way to go. Brilliant I thought.

As I have a number of older machines ( I used to build, fix and troubleshoot PC's) I decided to use one of those and picked one running Windows ME.

I got all the way through the process of setting the emulator up, until it came to adding hard drives, but the button to do that was greyed out. I tried it on all three drives ( one a scsi) and had no joy, although the POST saw each of them as slaves.

I communicated this to another kind chap, and, although he didn't know too much about using hard drives with the emulator, he bothered to go on the web and found a thread which he copied over to me.

It would seem, from this thread, that simply putting the Amiga drives onto a system running Win 98 or ME means I have destroyed any data on the drive. I found this hard to accept as the drives were not visible on desktop, and there was no drive activity. I would have thought that to destroy data, they would need to be written to.

Can you say whether this is so, that I have destroyed the data?

I got another PC out, mounted XP on it and tried again, and this time I could mount one of the drives, and even got it accessed by the emulator, and I could hear the drive working away, but the only thing that appeared on the screen was an error message about software failure and what looks like an address ie 8000 00B 00210558.

I would like to hope I am simply doing something wrong as I seemed to be successful in creating a hard drive image, though I cannot seem to access it.

Can you advise please?

[lopos2000]

Welcome to EAB.
Have a read through this thread. Harddrive connected to a USB.... It might help you a bit.

[Toni Wilen]

You need NT-based Windows (2000, XP etc..). Older Windows versions won't work and they will modify the RDB. It shouldn't damage any data and WinUAE should be able to fix the problem automatically (if used under 2000 or XP)

Boot from WB disk or directory in your PC. Don't boot from the Amiga harddrive because it most likely have software installed that requires real A3000 hardware.

thanks Iopos, I did look and it might help, but first I have to suspect that, as Toni says I have modified the RDB.

Is that the equivalent of the MBR in PC's?.

When I have booted my PC ( to which the Amiga drive is still attached as slave) and then startup Workbench, what do I need to do next to access the files on the drive, or on its image? Assuming its ok that is. It is so long since I have used Amigas, I have forgotten, but I couldn't see anything in the menus or folders to guide me

thank you for your help

[lopos2000]

Do you have the kickstart roms to start WinUAE? Without it, it won't start.

yes, kickstart and workbench - one file each.

[Smiley]

Originally Posted by Gracie

His wife wants to gather up all his works before disposing of the machines he has used for so many years

Is she disposing them for any sentimental type reasons? If not A4000s sell for quite a bit if they are in working order. But if you dont want to sell his possessions then fair enough.

[Rogueraven]

Just take the A4000's to a electical store you should be able to get the mainboard cleaned up and repaired around the batteries, and get new batteries fitted, for a small fee, once you done this they should work like new unless there is something else wrong with them

[Heavyweight7t6]

@Rogueraven I'd love to believe that one!. Having just blown one A4K motherboard and bought another one..and found this sucker has the same problem as the first one but alas doesnt have the dodgy mouse syndrom!.

I was to led to believe once the contents of the battery have eaten into the chips its a big job - ie remove damaged chips and check circuits for breaks... I know ive been there....

[Rogueraven]

yes once the contents of the battery has eaten at the chips its a big job, but if this has been catched early then more then likely its not so big of a deal