Creating Sega TeraDrive Hard Disk images

I've had two Sega TeraDrive systems sitting in my garage for a few years now, and just recently I've gotten them out of storage and I've been looking at them again. One thing I wanted to do was to create full images of the hard drives on these systems. Unfortunately, as any other TeraDrive owners here would probably know already, this is easier said than done, since the TeraDrive uses a non-standard HDD interface, so you can't just take out the drive and plug it into a newer machine. The only way to access the drive seems to be in the TeraDrive system itself. This leads to a further problem, which is that the TeraDrive is of course a 286, meaning only 16-bit applications can run, which immediately wipes out basically all your normal drive backup software as possible options here. After a lot of fiddling, I've come up with a solution.

Here's what you need in order to make a full HDD image of your TeraDrive:
-Your TeraDrive
-A 3.5" floppy drive, in a modern computer.
-A 3.5" floppy disk
-This software (freeware): http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/dfsee342.zip

Once you've got all that setup, it's time to take an image of the drive. What you're going to do is use the dfs software to do raw sector dumps of the drive, in 1MB chunks, onto your floppy disk. You then simply copy off each chunk onto your computer, and construct a complete disk image from the individual peices. Here are the steps:
1. Format or otherwise erase all data off the floppy disk
2. Extract the dfsee342.zip file, and copy just the DFSDOS.EXE file onto the floppy disk
3. Insert the floppy disk into your Teradrive
4. Boot up your TeraDrive until the main menu appears
5. Open up the file manager (top left item)
6. Select the "A:" drive from the drive list on the right
7. Open the "DFSDOS.EXE" software
8. Wait for the display to finish scrolling
9. Type in the following command: "DISK". Information on the main drive should appear.
10. Look for the line that begins with "LogGeo". Confirm the total size of the disk in sectors, which should appear after "Disksize". If your drive is the same as mine, this should read as 0000ED30.
11. Type in the following command: "sim A:\SECTOR00.IMG 0 800". This will transfer the first sector block off the hard drive onto your floppy disk.
12. Once the transfer is complete, put the floppy disk into your other computer, and move the backup file off the disk, then put the disk back in the Teradrive.

You now need to repeat steps 11 and 12 until all data has been backed up off the drive, however note that for step 11, you need to issue a slightly different command each time. You'll want to give each block a different filename so you can keep them in order, and you need to specify the starting sector number for each transfer. If your drive is the same size as mine (0xED30 sectors), you'll need to issue the following commands to copy all the data off the drive:
-"sim A:\SECTOR00.IMG 0 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR08.IMG 800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR10.IMG 1000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR18.IMG 1800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR20.IMG 2000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR28.IMG 2800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR30.IMG 3000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR38.IMG 3800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR40.IMG 4000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR48.IMG 4800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR50.IMG 5000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR58.IMG 5800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR60.IMG 6000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR68.IMG 6800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR70.IMG 7000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR78.IMG 7800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR80.IMG 8000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR88.IMG 8800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR90.IMG 9000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTOR98.IMG 9800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORA0.IMG A000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORA8.IMG A800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORB0.IMG B000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORB8.IMG B800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORC0.IMG C000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORC8.IMG C800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORD0.IMG D000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORD8.IMG D800 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORE0.IMG E000 800"
-"sim A:\SECTORE8.IMG E800 530"
If you have bad sectors on your drive, you may see the sector copy fail. If this happens type the command "SCAN", and the program will give you a list of sectors which cannot be read. You will need to copy the bad sector numbers down, and rip all readable data around the bad sectors. I can provide help with this if anyone encounters this problem. I had 25 bad sectors on my drive, but fortunately they were near the end of the disk in unused areas.

Once you have all the drive sectors copied off, it's time to combine them into one disk image. Download this batch script:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/CombineFiles.cmd
Drop it in the same folder as your sector dumps, and it'll spit out a combined "DRIVE.IMG" file. That's your disk image. You can now mount it or browse it using a tool of your choice (I recommend R-Studio). Also note that you can write disk images back to the Teradrive using the "wrim" command, but don't get the two commands confused!


I'd like to very strongly encourage any other TeraDrive owners here to take full disk images of their TeraDrive unit. Even if you've formatted and re-installed something else on it and think most likely any original data is gone, it's worth a try. Software for these systems is a lot rarer than the systems themselves, and you never know what interesting data might be lurking on the unused areas of the disk. I've only ripped one of the disks from my TeraDrive so far, but there's a lot of very interesting stuff on this drive, I have the Puzzle Construction software installed on this machine, but I'm finding the most interesting stuff isn't what's in the files that remain on the drive, it's in the free areas containing file data that's been deleted. From digging through the drive contents, I can tell that this particular TeraDrive model was owned by Sega, and resided in the marketing/sales department. One user was "Bunsuke Oshita", which a Google search confirms worked in the promotions/sales department for Sega. I managed to recover two emails that were sent from Mr Oshita to various people in July 1991 and January 1992, and two other email fragments with unknown dates. There's also large remenants of an inventory database for TeraDrive hardware Sega manufactured, and remains of promotional materials for the Teradrive, and sales material for other Sega products too, including remnants of production and sales information for the Mega Drive. Here's the email fragments I've recovered:
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email1.txt
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email2.txt
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email3.txt
http://nemesis.hacking-cult.org/MegaDrive/TeraDrive/HDD/Salvaged/Email4.txt
This goes to show how important it is to take full drive images off these kind of systems, not just copy off the files you can see in the directory.

I'd like to add that I'm very interested in trading drive/disk images. I have quite an extensive set of documentation scans and disk images for the TeraDrive, so if you have a TeraDrive system and you're interested in trading anything, let me know.

 

Although I'm not familiar with the TeraDrive, it's great to read what you've accomplished, and even better the great tutorial you are sharing. Thanks!

 

Is there a reason why you are doing it all on the device?

Couldnt you just remove the drive and clone the hdd in another system?

(I dont know anything about the terradrive, but if you are using dos tools - its obviously pc/x86)

Also, can you put an ISA nic in there? why not the dos version of ghost and backup to a network share?

Floppy disks just seems a painful way to do this... but obviously I have never seen a machine, so maybe its possible this is the only way...

 

Says in the original post that the Terradrive uses a proprietary connector for the HDD.

This is some deep shit though bro, thanks for sharing.

 

Google-fu says it has a ISA slot though, so rest still applies

 

Find me a version of ghost with a 16-bit executable then. I also posted that in my description. This is a 286 we're talking about, 32-bit executables don't work, it needs to be a 16-bit executable. If you have a version 1 of ghost it might be doable, but I looked very long and hard for old versions of ghost, and the oldest version I could find was still 32-bit.

 

Nice stuff thanks for sharing.

I couldn't help but laught on the "ps" of the third email, probably some head rolled lol

 

Damn Nemesis, you're so prolific. Keep up the good work.

(MNc99 on spritesmind)

 

So many projects, so little time.... (and money :friendly_wink

 

DOS (16 bit) version of ghost is easily available. It comes with Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1 (or any other version) which is still current and still supported.

You are probably finding the consumer version of (Norton) ghost, which is crap and never supported DOS. You want the one thats branded Symantec Ghost.

The latest version is 11.5.1 but the EXE is around 1.6MB. You would need to create a DOS floppy with network drivers (I assume you will use a NE2000 based ISA nic) and then run the exe from a network share.

Failing that, older versions of ghost (6 is probably your best bet) is around 600KB if memory serves.

AND FAILING THAT....

Why not just put in a NIC anyway and use the tool you have already found?

As I said, floppies is just painful when there are easier/better ways.

 

I think you're getting a little confused about what a 16-bit executable is. The 286 was a 16-bit processor. Just because something is a DOS application, doesn't mean it's 16-bit. Just like we now have 64-bit processors, and 64-bit software that you can't run on 32-bit processors, before the 386 hit the market, all PC applications were 16-bit. The 386 introduced 32-bit addressing, and 32-bit code. Just like how modern 64-bit processors can run 64-bit and 32-bit applications, the 386 could run 32-bit applications and 16-bit applications, but the 286 cannnot run 32-bit applications. After the introduction of the 386, most new software was 32-bit, unless they specifically wanted to support 16-bit systems, which not many developers did. This means a large number of DOS applications don't run on a 286, including unfortunately all drive backup software I've seen, since hard drives were very new and expensive, and handly anyone had more than one of them, let alone to waste on full drive backups alone back in the 286 era.

Your idea about a network card is possible, but more problematic than you might think. Again, the 286 hardware gets in the way here. Remember that token ring systems were all the rage back in these days. Ethernet, not so much. I think I used to have a period network card with ethernet support, but no longer. Even if I could get one again, getting communication happning over the network to this box seems a lot harder and longer than using a floppy disk. The drive is only 30MB afterall.

 

NE2000 based nics are ISA (few latter ones were PCI) and support Ethernet, I used to use them "back in the day". Some earlier ones might need a AUI to Ethernet adapter. But they also came with Ethernet directly on board.

Ghost.exe was a 16bit application. Ghost32.exe is 32bit and ghost64.exe is 64bit. However, they move to 386 protected mode from v5. I had forgotten about this (as it was a long time ago!) until you mentioned it.

So you will want 4.1 or earlier, which you can find with some searching (I actually have the exe's at work, from version 1 until the most current as we have used it for years and years)

Getting dos network support isnt difficult (especially for a NE2000 nic), but I do work in deployment and have done for some time - so I do this type of thing daily.

DOS is 16 bit btw, the 32 bit support is via extenders and hacks. The actual OS itself is 16 bit, as is Windows until 3.x (remember Win32s?)

Edit:

Screenshot for you:




Protip: Be less of a douchbag toward someone who could have helped you.

 

I didn't mean to come across as aggressive, though after reading my initial reply again I can see how it could have come across that way. I had very little time and was posting rather quickly, so I didn't take a lot of time to read how it came across.

That's quite an impressive collection of Ghost versions you have there! I did look long and hard for older versions of Ghost, both several years back, and again just a week or so ago when I started looking into this again, and the oldest version I could find was version 5, publically available on the net anyway, which as you've pointed out won't work in this case. Obviously people out there have copies, but nobody has put it online that I could find, but maybe you know of some sites I don't. I didn't know they had old versions included with the newer software suites though.

In terms of the network card route, while I'm sure that could be made to work, it wasn't suitable in my case, because as I said I no longer had any ISA network cards (I got rid of most of my older computer hardware a few years back), and I wanted a solution that other people could make use of without any extra hardware. My original idea was actually to use Ghost to do the backup over a serial link cable to another machine, which I know the older versions support, but I decided not to go this route because it seemed like more work than it needed to be, and I wanted something that could work for others. Respectfully, I wasn't posting this thread to ask for help, I was posting it to provide a solution for other people who had TeraDrive systems so that they could backup their drives. I consider the floppy disk method to be better than using a network card, simply because all it requires in addition to the TeraDrive itself is a single 1.44MB floppy disk, and a working floppy drive in another computer, which almost everyone will still have or can easily obtain, and the full drive backup took less than an hour while I occasionally pressed a few buttons and swapped a floppy back and forth during an episode of NCIS. Maybe it would have taken you less time than this to do the backup over a network card, but having no experience with either network interfaces in DOS, or using Ghost over a network/serial interface, it certainly would have taken me longer than just using a floppy.

 

While I can see your point about doing it with the minimum amount of equipment - if you are going to use the machine for anything, network support is a must IMO (Maybe I am biased as I mostly hate floppies). Copying stuff back and forth between floppies is an era thankfully mostly forgotten.

I don't think it would be difficult for me to roll a floppy image that will have NE2000 network support + ghost. You could then give this out to people who have teradrives and dump their hdd's easily (which looked like your ultimate goal of the tutorial - get people to dump theirs and share possibly hidden data like your emails).

Someone can pop in a NE2000 nic, write the floppy image and dump the HDD for analysis with little fuss. If someone is buying a teradrive, the price of a NE2000 nic is a minimal expense.

We can put rushed replies behind us and I have no problem helping you roll an easy solution. Although I dont know how many people even have teradrives, not alone be willing to dump the data.

 

Getting a disk like that would be fantastic, the more alternatives we have for this the better. I don't have the means to test it fully, but I can verify it boots and launches Ghost at the very least, and then maybe someone else who has a network card can give the backup itself a go.

I'm also not sure how many people here have TeraDrive systems. Assembler did a few years back, I assume he still has it. RetroJunkie got his hands on one recently, but it was a model 2 (which I've never actually seen before, I was beginning to doubt they existed outside the brochures), and the model 2 has no HDD, so it doesn't really apply here. At any rate, I think anyone who owns a system like this would want to backup the drives if possible, for their own reference if nothing else. Sharing them with others is something else entirely, but anyone would want to have a backup of the data for security. My main interest is helping people simply get backups of these drives before they all die, which they will eventually.

 

Out of interest - assuming the HDD does eventually die, how2replace?


Is it just a case of being a standard drive (for the era) with a different physical connector? My lack of owning a TeraDrive is showing - maybe some pictures of the HDD connector?

 

A basic ISA nic is dirt cheap. Whether you can find DOS drivers or if they'd work for your goal... That I don't know.

Here's one claiming NE2000 compatible, one cent (really!) starting bid before postage. Assuming nobody else bids.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Magitronic-...US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item27c74203b9

 

NE2000 chipset was common for nics at that time.

It was mostly Intel, NE2000 and some 3Com chipsets that were extremely common. All of which have dos drivers available.

As I said - minimal expense

Here is a buy it now that would do the job too:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LAN-Etherne...etwork_Cards&hash=item2a1cbd1286#ht_522wt_952

 

Wouldn't it be easier to use a serial null-modem cable or a parallel cable and a dos6 boot floppy with interlnk, or even a parallel zip100 drive instead of the floppy juggling?
Also, does dolly work on the TeraDrive? It's available at http://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=14&p=14

 

Whammy! I've got a TeraDrive Model 3 with no hard drive, but it does have the hard drive cable. If anyone's got a spare drive, hit me up with some of that 44-pin goodness.