Two technical problems...

[bguenter@rummelplatz.uni-mannheim.de (Boris Guenter)]

Greetings! Here they are:

1) Recovering data from a damaged Focus HD

Some months ago, my Focus 20 hard card exhausted its spirit, taking
some of my works in progress with it. Yes, I know, I should have a
backup. No, I don't have one. But I have still hope that I can recover
some of the data. 

I don't believe that it is a real physical head crash, rather a blasted
boot sector. Booting has been a little unreliable in the last weeks
before the accident happened and when I now turn on my Focus card, it
emits some scrapping noises as if it looks for the boot sector but
can't find it.

Now the question is: Can I still read data from the drive by bypassing
the boot sector? If not on the IIgs then perhaps on a pc? Is there a
way to connect the IDE drive to a pc and access it with file utilities?
The drive itself is formatted as a single ProDos partition. If 
everything else fails, I will have to let the HD be repaired
by a professional HD recovery service and that would not be worth
the costs...

2) Connecting an Epson LQ 850+ to the gs

I have got this printer from a friend who has used it on his pc. It
has the long parallel pc connector on the back and a round connector
which looks like this, with five contacts and an indentation near the
top. 

                       v
                     /    \
                       __   
                    I      I
                       I    

When I went into the local Macintrash shop and asked the salesman if
this is is a connector for a serial cable, he promptly responded that
the computer can probably be connected only via the parallel port and
that an adapter card would be more expensive than the printer itself.
Then, he recommended that I should buy an Apple printer.

I would not trust these information farther than I can see in a dark
tunnel in the night. Before I am going to spend many $$$ to buy a
new printer (and perhaps a new computer, or two), I would like to ask
the csa2 folks if they have managed to use this printer and which cable
they have used to get a serial connection.

                            Thanks in advance

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"The Answer to the Great Question          |\/| /\ |__||  | | |\  |
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Need Apple II gs software? Visit ftp.uni-kl.de...
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