...and the blue screen of death. I'm fucked, right? This is on an old Gateway I keep around because my newer PC won't run the drivers for my old Alps printer, and only has USB inputs for newer printers.
XP? If so you can put the drive into another XP PC and repair it with the 'fixboot' command prompt. At least I think so, Ive never had to fix a boot sector before.
Workaround- I found a serial-to-USB cable. Gonna see if I can get the printer to work on my regular PC first.
Dan, I finally got around to trying your suggestion and guess what - my newer PC's drive connections are totally different than the good ol' ribbon cable on my old PC. I didn't know they up and friggin changed everything.
I checked Staples' website to see if the do drive recovery. The prices are fucking insane. I'll give 'em a call next week and describe the actual problem, see what they say.
This happens at work sometimes. Here's what I do: Hook up the hard drive to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102 Then hook that up to another computer. It will read like a USB drive. Most of what is important will be in x:\documents and settings\user name (if it's Windows XP). After the data has been recovered, I normally wipe the drive, then reinstall from scratch (or if it's a work pc, simply copy a fresh image from a master copy onto it). If this is too advanced or you don't have anything important on the older PC, it would be a lot less inexpensive to purchase a newer printer for your newer PC than paying the geek squad to shrug their shoulders and direct you to the sales floor.
Oh, and before you try anything, try putting the drive back into the computer, enter the BIOS or CMOS when you first turn it on, and look for an option that will set all the settings back to default. Usually a longshot, but with older computers, you never know.
Thanks! The whole reason for this is that the printer is something special. It's an Alps MD-5000 Microdry, that prints opaque ribbon-ink on decal film. It can print white, metallic silver and metallic gold. It's long out of production. It's how I make my own decals for my models. And naturally, there is no currently available replacement.
Ah, I see what you're doing now. It's a fancy name for a sublimation printer. My buddy that owns the graphics shop has several and he too uses them to make decals for his models. Perhaps it's time for you to change brands. He just got a new one from HP for $150. The bitch is the ink. For a full set of all colors, it's about $300.
Hmmm......I'm not really great at computers, so "Unmountable Boot Volume" sounds like some gay cowboys eating pudding situation to me. Hope I helped!
Yep, and almost on any substrate. If a customer doesn't want to pay for engraving on a trophy or something, he can print full color on the brass plaque. Just feed it through the printer.
I called him for you, to be sure, and he said that he's dealt with people all over the nation and these are, by far, the best people to deal with and their inks are superior to others he's tried. He said to poke around the website and they carry everything you'd need. But, he said to price shop everything but the inks. They wanted $200 for the first sublimation printer he had, but he picked it up on NewEgg for $80.
Thanks, Elwood!! Of course, this id purely hobby-related. I can't really spend anything over, say, 500 on a new printer. And only when all other options are closed. I still know people on the hobby boards with working Alps who'll print it for me, for a fee.
Found the right driver on an old backup disk, and it still won't load on my newer PC. I have the old Windows installation disk for the Gateway, so I'm using the gizmo to format the drive and start from scratch. Last. Resort.
My first complete reinstall of an OS seems to be proceeding well. There was apparently a boot repair function on the OS CD, which would have been nice. But I couldn't get the thing to boot from the CD until after I wiped the drive. Oh well.
It makes me wonder if I should dump the OS on my newer PC and load the old, old version of XP on it. It seemed SO much less buggy.
Ordinarily, I'd say you were full of it. But, and this is by no means an insult, since you are hanging on to and are limited to using the latest and greatest of 1995 technology, that may be a smart move. I'd find a new printing solution that did away with the antiquated need for a serial port, but I'm not really sure what you need or can afford.
