Abstract: A short story about how to create Agilent 86100A win 98 hdisk image with Clonezilla. It is not as easy as what I thought about.
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I got my Agilent 86100A about 6 years ago, with two modules installed: 1)HP83483A two channel 20GHz scope, 2) Agilent 54754A TDR/TDT 18GHz. It was dead when I got it, could not power on. I traced to the power supply enable pin, and forced power always on. The TDR works, touch screen works, encoder works. but the panel buttons (or keys) and soft power-on switch have no response. To power on/off, I have to plug/unplug the AC power core, that is the way I have been using it as TDR for about 6 years. I believe the other module, 20GHz scope, is working also. Later I will spend some time and try to fix all the problems. Anyway, each time when I unplugged the AC, I worried about the hard disk damage, so far , I have been lucky, nothing wrong.
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A while ago, I read Gerald¡¯s post of 7/05/2018 about Agilent 86100A hard disk re-install, I realized that I should make an image for my 86100A original hard drive before too late.
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The original hard disk is windows 98, VFAT, about 350Mbyte in an IBM 5G Hdisk, 2.5" IDE 44 interface.
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To create an image, the first step is to connect the IDE44 hdisk to my old Win xp PC, I bought an IDE44 to USB external Hdisk converter on ebay, about $6, it works. This might be the simplest way, avoiding mess up with Hdisk configurations. A quick check showed that I can see the IDE44 Hdisk in windows xp.
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My first try was Ghost 9.0 under windows xp. With the cloned hdisk, the 86100A displayed "GRUB" at boot and hang. Why? Could be many reasons, such as not supporting VFAT, only support win XP..., Ghost early versions might work, unfortunately, they do not support USB external drive.
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Then I started to google the related keywords, such as ¡°GRUB¡±, ¡°clone win 95 hard disk¡±¡, this makes me recalled the knowledge of DOS, windows 95, fdisk, sys, xcopy, format¡ about 30 years ago, finally, I saw someone successfully cloned an old win 95 hdisk with Clonezilla, an open source software. ¡°That might be the right tool, it does not rely on any OS, it directly accesses the hard disk hardware¡± I thought. 20 years ago, the early version ghost did the similar work.
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As what I expected, the Clonezilla (latest version of 2022) does provide the bootable .iso image, I burnt a CD, and boot my windows xp machine. ¡°It could destroy my original hard disk if I make a mistake¡±, so I decided to practice with an empty IDE44 hard disk till I sure it works. The Clonezilla seemed understanding me very well, before it wrote data to hard disk, warning me twice. ?
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After I understood how Clonezilla works, I started to do my real work - create the image and save to my XP PC. It did not have trouble to create the image with default ¡°beginner mode¡±, every step is very clear and reasonable.
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Next, I restored the image to a new hard disk and boot my 86100A. It did not work, showing: "Missing Operating System". I felt better with this error message, at least it is not ¡°GRUB¡± anymore. ¡°What¡¯s happed? It is supposed to work¡±. It was at midnight, ¡°It might be better to go sleep and process it next day in the morning with a fresh brain¡±.
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Next morning, I had some idea: ¡°Use the original hard disk boot 86100A, and create a bootable floppy disk, then change to the cloned hdisk and boot with floppy, in DOS mod, with command ¡®sys c:¡¯ I should be able to transfer the OS back to Hdisk boot sector (MBR 512 bytes)¡±, this is what we did in the old days.
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I checked my 86100A rear panel, expecting to see PS/2 sockets for keyboard and mouse. The mouse is PS/2 socket, but keyboard is not, it is AT 5 pin DIN socket. That means I had no way to issue command ¡°sys c:¡±, unless I could find a 30-year old keyboard, or I ordered an AT 5 pin to PS/2 adaptor on ebay, which will take 5 days to deliver. Only $5, why not. So I ordered it.
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¡°Clonezilla is a new software, it should work, I might use it incorrectly¡± during the day when I worked in office I thought. ¡°Is the beginner mode too simple? Clonezilla has an expert mode, something may be in the expert mode¡±. So I planned to try the ¡°export mod¡± at night.
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In the evening I received an ebay package, SATA to IDE44 male adaptor, I ordered 3days ago. This means that I can try a new 500G Sata 2.5¡± disks. This is the 2.5¡± Hdisk today we can buy.
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After my kids went sleep, I started to look at the expert mode: "Expert mode: choose your own options", in which, I can manually enable the option: "-j1 write MBR (512B) again after image is restored. ....", this looked very promising!
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Yes, it worked, the 86100A boot and ran successfully!
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I guess in beginner mode Clonezilla wiped the MBR 512-byte OS information at end of clone. If we need to keep OS in MBR sector, we have to write it back at very end.
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I restored the image to two new hdisks, IDE44, 40G 2.5" Hdisk, and SATA 500G 2.5" Hdisk (with SATA to IDE44 interface male adaptor on the IDE44 cable), both Hdisks work.
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Clonezilla is free, it can be a bootable CD (not DVD), like what I did, and can be a bootable USB flash drive, if you use a new PC. Clonzilla supports USB external HDisk.
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I hope this can help those who want to back up the hard disk in the old equipment.
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Lin
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