AutoMax - way to recover program from faulted CPU?

[DamianInRochester]

I would send all the floppys in to a data recovery shop. You would be amazed what they can read from old media. All the legacy media readers out today for everyday consumers are very poor. I have also had instances where I have retried the read over and over again and every now and then was able to get it to work after many repeated attempts (20+).

I echo Jeffrey's sentiments. I have a customer with a slightly older Automax system that both refuses to upgrade and also continues to bury their head in the sand about the imminent disaster that is going to happen sooner or later. They actually have their program on a old 5-1/4 floppy. Good luck ready that after 30 years. They have one print out of the program that looks like a faded receipt, much is illegible, and the program is littered with penned in and penciled in corrections and logic changes. Just think of all the changes that didn't make it into the notes.

This particular machine makes the raw material for 98% of what they make. If it goes down, they may as well just close the doors.

Time to upgrade. If you have to re-type it all in from scratch you are probably better to hack in a new controller and hack it in from scratch that way.

 

[BAJ]

Alan - Yes, sadly that happens far too often.

 

[BAJ]

Holy cow, OCR kind of works! I had thrown in the towel on it about noon yesterday, but every now and then contacting tech support pays off. ;-) Late yesterday I got some good tips from tech support and now can get text files that are somewhat close to the hard copies I'm scanning. Not perfect, but better than starting from scratch. Previous OCR results were not far too much of a mess, starting from scratch was less work! Unfortunately we're already half-done re-typing the code, but at least we can use it on the other half!

If anyone cares, I used Readiris Pro v12, it came with my HP m425dn (the sheet-feed scanner is really nice!).

Details below:
Use the OCR Wizard
Pick your source (Image file or scanner)
Set scanner settings (ADF if you have a sheet feeder)
Select the language
Select the output file format - click "Change"
Select External File, from the pull-down menu below pick a text file (MS DOS, unicode, whatever).
On the layout tab, Create Body Text should be selected (others grayed out)
On the options tab, UNCHECK Merge Lines into Paragraphs
Click Go to start the scan
When done, enter a file name for the .txt, it won't be what you want but it lets the process finish

Readiris will highlight little boxes of text all over the page with numbers on them, it will put the text in those boxes in your output file in the order listed, top to bottom, not where they are shown on the scanned page. Probably not what you want.
Now for the trick. Take your mouse and click-n-drag a box (orange) around all the text on the scanned page. All the little boxes inside the big box you drew will disappear. Repeat this for each page scanned (can be a little tedious, but better than typing!).
Delete any pink boxes that remain by clicking on them and pressing DEL (I had to click on them a second time, but not double-click).
When done with all pages, click the "Recognize and Save" button on the left panel. It will re-analyze the file and prompt you for a text file name again (should have the last one you entered already in there). If you use the same name, allow it to replace the existing file with the new file. Do make note of the folder and path you saved to so you can find it afterwards!

Open the output file in your favorite text editor (I'm partial to TextPad). You WILL need to review the file for errors, it's not perfect, but believe it or not Readiris seemed to be the most accurate of the 10 or so I tested in the last 36 hours.

Cheers,
-Brad

 

[OdinIII]

It is a small world... Look for old Reliance business cards taped to the inside of the cabinet.

I guarantee someone has that machines program

I'd bet money that a copy of the code is sitting somewhere within driving distance. Do you or the company know the names of the Reliance field service Engineers that started-up or worked on the system in the past? Didn't very few OEMs start up their own equipment with Automax processors?

My area doesn't have any RA guys who know AMX anymore but I bet I could contact at least 2 ex-employees that have a copy of our code. I'm sure both would be willing to share for a "fee".

 

[palmerosd]

atuomax

please, i need the automax v3.1 executive o later,
somebody can help me?

 

[pmascarenas]

3.4e or 3.8b or 3.9a ??

 

[wenbuyi]

Holy cow, OCR kind of works! I had thrown in the towel on it about noon yesterday, but every now and then contacting tech support pays off. ;-) Late yesterday I got some good tips from tech support and now can get text files that are somewhat close to the hard copies I'm scanning. Not perfect, but better than starting from scratch. Previous free ocr results were not far too much of a mess, starting from scratch was less work! Unfortunately we're already half-done re-typing the code, but at least we can use it on the other half!

If anyone cares, I used Readiris Pro v12, it came with my HP m425dn (the sheet-feed scanner is really nice!).

Details below:
Use the OCR Wizard
Pick your source (Image file or scanner)
Set scanner settings (ADF if you have a sheet feeder)
Select the language
Select the output file format - click "Change"
Select External File, from the pull-down menu below pick a text file (MS DOS, unicode, whatever).
On the layout tab, Create Body Text should be selected (others grayed out)
On the options tab, UNCHECK Merge Lines into Paragraphs
Click Go to start the scan
When done, enter a file name for the .txt, it won't be what you want but it lets the process finish

Readiris will highlight little boxes of text all over the page with numbers on them, it will put the text in those boxes in your output file in the order listed, top to bottom, not where they are shown on the scanned page. Probably not what you want.
Now for the trick. Take your mouse and click-n-drag a box (orange) around all the text on the scanned page. All the little boxes inside the big box you drew will disappear. Repeat this for each page scanned (can be a little tedious, but better than typing!).
Delete any pink boxes that remain by clicking on them and pressing DEL (I had to click on them a second time, but not double-click).
When done with all pages, click the "Recognize and Save" button on the left panel. It will re-analyze the file and prompt you for a text file name again (should have the last one you entered already in there). If you use the same name, allow it to replace the existing file with the new file. Do make note of the folder and path you saved to so you can find it afterwards!

Open the output file in your favorite text editor (I'm partial to TextPad). You WILL need to review the file for errors, it's not perfect, but believe it or not Readiris seemed to be the most accurate of the 10 or so I tested in the last 36 hours.

Cheers,
-Brad

Thanks for the details, it help a lot.