Help needed recovering files from a (dead) Iyonix HD

Hello!

So I dug my Iyonix out of storage today – I wrote some software a looong time ago that it turns out is still in use – but does not work on the latest version of RO – no surprises, as it’s over 16 years old now!

Long story short, it won’t boot. … I’ve read lots of posts about holding down various keys whilst booting, removing cards, cleaning cards, swapping things around, to no avail :(

… I’ve also managed to rip the CR2032 battery off the board, taking it’s contacts with it – oops!

Anyhow – all is (hopefully) not lost – I have a USB HD cradle that can handle both SATA + IDE drives … so my question is – Assuming that the disc is OK, is there any way I can read it from a PC if I stick it in my USB cradle thingy?

… TIA,

If I read you correctly, then you think that the disc is OK and it is the old Iyonix which is troublesome at best.

If that is the case, then the more that you play with, the more likely it is that you will corrupt the disc. My thought is taht you should put the Iyonix back in storage and look for another RISC OS computer to read the disk.

I you haven’t got one, then the cost of a Raspberry Pi may well be worth the investment to safeguard your files. Your USB HD cradle should work on a Ras Pi with far less risk of corrupting your files.

Welcome back the easiest way to access the data would be with a pi running Risc os then you won’t need to worry about the data format your software might not work being 26bit but the source code will be fine, I am sure someone on the forum would send you an old unused Pi if you did not want to buy one just to welcome you back to the fold.

A IDE to USB cradle will work fine with the Pi, I was doing exactly that last weekend.

Wow – thanks!

I have quite a few Raspberry Pi floating about – that totally sounds like the way to go!

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou :)

The other option would be to stick the disk in a Linux or BSD machine and use ‘dd’ to make a low level image of the disk. This could be used in Arculator or RPCEmu.

So … as a quick update – everything seems to be looking good – thanks for the help :)

… I’ve managed to mount the drive on a RPi, and after some grief, managed to format a 64Gb USB stick to FAT 32. … discovered that you can’t just copy files on to a flash drive and copy them into a hostfs partition in RPCEmu, so am currently in the process of zipping my old HD (managed to find SparkFS on my old disc!) :)

The plan is, get everything off of the 20 year old chunk of spinning rust ASAP, then see if I my old Norcroft compiler tools will run, either in the emulator, or on the RPi…

I’m pretty sure that I was a “Select” subscriber back in the day, so I presume all of my software was 32bit, so should still run OK (well, SparkFS seems good so far at least :)

… we shall see … winter is drawing in … think I’ve found my rainy Sunday (or lockdown Tuesday) entertainment ;)

… thanks again – J. :)

Welcome back to RO Jamie. A name I recall from the RO world a year or so (cough) back.

then see if I my old Norcroft compiler tools will run, either in the emulator, or on the RPi…

OK in the RPCEmu, assuming you use RO3.7 (bundle available) or possibly Select, might work on RPCEmu RO5 but there are some limitations. RPi – I think needs a more recent DDE because of the newer processor and the newest Pi’s even more so.

Bear in mind that you can easily set up two Emulator instances and run two versions side by side (the fan on the host machine gets more work) so Select and RO5.29 are possible there.

I’m pretty sure that I was a “Select” subscriber back in the day, so I presume all of my software was 32bit, so should still run OK (well, SparkFS seems good so far at least :)

Select ran (runs?) the CPU in 26 bit mode, so I suspect you’re going to find a collection of items that still retain that legacy.

The old SparkFS can be patched up – David has always been more than generous – the read-only version has been part of the RO disc for a while and I seem to recall that the R/W version was being made available to all. (Didn’t pay much attention as I’ve had SparkFS for quite a long time.)

I have in the past found various items that were labelled 32bit, but although the authors had bolted 32bit headers on a module here or there the actual code retained the old style flag passing.
Download ARMalyser, you find it quite useful for checks and disassembly (patch, recompile) where the updated items don’t exist because the author left the RO arena.

see if I my old Norcroft compiler tools will run, either in the emulator, or on the RPi…

If your Norcroft tools are from the Iyonix era, there’s a problem. Even if they run on the RPi, they won’t generate code suitable for it. The ARM instruction set has changed over the years. (That’s why programming in assembly language is a bad idea.)

If you can afford it, a new toolset will be well worth it.

25 pound for the upgrade of you old version there used to be a nutpi version but I am not sure if it is still available

25 pound for the upgrade of you old version

Not quite accurate. The half-price upgrade is for people with older versions purchased from ROOL:

Half-Price upgrade for £25 inc. VAT

If you have purchased the DDE from RISC OS Open more than twelve months ago, you can upgrade to the latest version as a zip file download at this reduced rate

You could enquire.

there used to be a nutpi version but I am not sure if it is still available

NutPi was essentially a Pi1 locked set of software done as a promotion.
Making a version that also worked on Pi2 was awkward I believe.
Making a version that worked on Pi1, Pi2, … was probably too much.