Guys, Well, with three young kids, a demanding wife and busy job (let alone what I have to do out of work to make a few extra quid!) I have been crap at sifting through all the stuff I pulled out of the Empire Interactive skip back in 2008 (see the old thread)... I hate to even think if those Jaz disks still work, if I get some spare time over the winter, I might look... Anyway, why am I rambling about this? Because despite me thinking they had re-located to Muswell Hill before going bust, it seems something is going on at the old offices in North Finchley again, as a new skip found it's way there a couple of weeks back! Now, I think this is the inside of the building being re-decorated, because most of the skip is full of desks, sofas etc. but they must have come across a couple of last bits from Empire's time there, and one thing in particular is possibly VERY interesting, but I need help to figure it out. By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 Basically, it's a Plexwriter CD burner unit, with four CD-RW drives on the front... Nothing exciting I thought and was cleaning it up tonight to throw it on eBay (yeah, I know!), but I thought I should check if it powered up, and then I found out it has a 20GB hard drive inside, with only 5GB free!!! By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 By cawley1 at 2011-08-14 So, how do I find out what is on the drive? I saw it was EIDE when it booted up, so I opened it up and removed the HD and stuck it in my PC, but Win7 wanted to initialise it, so I told it to piss off and put it back in the burner (checked it and the info is still the same!) Does the Plexwriter store the images to burn on the internal hard drive? if so, by my calculations, there could be 21 CD's worth of data in there at 650Mb a pop! Is this Mac format, or something else? There is a 25-Pin connector on the back (parallel, serial?), but I have no idea what software you would need to drive the unit... Over to one of you guys! Thanks, Paul
It looks like there are disk images on the internal hardware. You should be able to burn the images using the controls next to the screen.
OK - A quick update... After posting I did the obvious thing (Google!) and found the manual, which has enabled me to burn a CD from the 25 images that are on the hard drive! Even better, I thought these would be Mac, but it is PC format, and the first one I have burnt looks like Pipemania for the Playstation 2, in PAL format! The disk has three folders (MOVIES, PS2, SOUNDS) and three files in the root (PS2.PAK, SLES_552.40, SYSTEM.CNF)! I am not familiar with PS2 stuff, so is this a retail disc, or is it something else? (I can test on my PS2, but assume I will need a debug system to get it to work?) Off to burn some more images, will let you all know how I get on! Paul
Another update... Not so interesting now, after the Pipemania, the next three CD's are all sound samples! Something called Sound Select (I have Sound Select 1 CD's 2 & 4, and Sound Select 3 CD 11). Hope the other 20-odd are more interesting than sound samples, but I won't hold my breath! Paul
Well, I am up to CD 7 now, which was House eJay (an Empire PC title), so might be something better as there are still another 17 CD's to go... Did not expect to find anything that exciting, I guess when I have burned them all, I will wipe the HD and do what I was planning to do in the first place! Could offer it up on Marketplace here I guess... Paul
Well, yeah, you'll probably get more for it unwiped, it's not like obsolete computer hardware is something too many people wanna buy if there's no good reason to.
Guys, Burning going OK, seems to be quite a few Empire PC CD-Rom games on there as I go further into the images. I will upload a full list of what I have later (I am running low on blank CD's, believe it or not so need to get hold of some more before I can get everything off!) If I do go to sell this, does anyone have any idea what I should be asking? I could just chuck it on eBay for £1 starting bid and see how it goes! Paul
If you do clean it don't remove any stickers or writing. make sure to big up what the item is, where its from etc, the company is dead so you shouldnt have any trouble. If you do sell it and you have dumped the stuff off the hard drive make sure you mention that so you dont get chargebacked or anything. I'd start it at 99p + postage. If it doesn't make much you're not really out of pocket since it was free!
Guys, Hope I am not breaking any forum rules, but this unit is now up on eBay, search for 'Empire Interactive', starting it at 99p on a five day auction. Obviously everyone here knows that I have been burning the images held on the hard drive - if one of you buy it and want these discs sent at the same time, that is no problem with me. I will also offer up this information to the buyer on eBay, hence nothing found on it will be shared until the sale is complete. I will list the full image contents of the hard drive once I have a chance to burn the last couple of discs! Thanks, Paul
Throw it in your pc again but use this program. http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Data-Recovery-Wizard/3000-2248_4-10880816.html It can access files and transfer them to your main hard drive without formatting the drive. The program may be old but it works in Windows 7 64bit just fine and I've used it to access old IBM machine drives.
That program will only work on filesystem formats it knows. The image and filesystem are still intact because he can burn the disks. Its probably just not using a format Windows knows about - which means that software wont help either.
Guys The unit has sold, and been collected - by a guy who wants to use it for CD duplication! He even asked me to format the hard drive before he collected, so now all the images are burnt off onto CD's, I can share the excitement (or not!) of what was on the burner. 1) Pipemania (Playstation 2) 2) Sound Select 1 CD4 (PC) 3) Sound Select 1 CD2 (PC) 4) Sound Select 3 CD11 (PC) 5) Sound Select 4 CD15 (PC) 6) eJay SC5 D20 (PC) 7) House eJay (PC) 8) House eJay (PC) - Same as CD7? 9) Ford Racing 3 (PC) 10) Warrior Kings (PC) - German Language. 11) Mig Alley (PC) - (C) 1999. 12) Techno 4 CD1 (PC) 13) Drive to Survive (PC) 14) Hiphop 5 CD 1 (PC) 15) Ghost Master (PC) 16) Combat Chess (PC) 17) Pro Pinball Big Race USA (PC) 18) FlatOut (PC) 19) Ford Racing 3 (PC) - Same as CD9? 20) Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (PC) - Not sure why this was on there! 21) Big Mutha Truckers 2 (PC) 22) Hiphop eJay 5 (PC) 23) Hiphop eJay 5 CD2 (PC) 24) Techno 4 CD2 (PC) 25) Techno 4 CD2 (PC) - Same as CD24? So there you have it, nothing particularly exciting... I am not sure if any of these are pre-release versions, or just on the burner for duplication, one day when I get a chance, I might figure it out... Thanks, Paul
Definitely a PAL disc. Since it's a CD game, you'll need a debug system, a modchip, Swap Magic CD, or a Free McBoot+Open PS2 Loader setup to boot the disc. There's no way to boot it from optical disc on an unmodded retail system except for Swap Magic because the mechacon doesn't have an "out" for non-audio CDs like it does for DVD-Video discs, so the hardware will block the system from even being able to read the disc directly without the Swap Magic sensor-blocking.
