[NTLK] Need help with saving data from a 120

Hi all,

I just received an interesting MP120 from a guy on the opposite side of the Atlantic that is
stubbornly acting up (the MP120, not, to the best of my knowledge, the guy on the opposite side of
the Atlantic). What I want to do is save this guy's notes.

The Newton in question is a MP120 OS 2.0. It shows the following symptoms:

1) Pressing the Notes icon produces error -48005 which translates to "Single object is corrupted,
can't recover".

2) The "Memory Info" slip is almost empty, only the four checkboxes at the bottom are present.
Checking "Notes" and closing the slip (which would normally set Notes as the backdrop application)
brings up an error slip reporting that Notes failed to open and was hence not set as the backdrop
(I've never seen this error message before).

3) Since the incomplete memory info slip made me think there was some glitch in the OS or an OS
patch, I replaced the ROM board, but this did not fix things.

4) Backing up the Newton to a memory card produces no error, but it seems no data is backed up. I
restored the card backup to other Newton to verify this.

5) "Export" using NCU says "Preparing for export", but never shows anything that can be exported. I
waited almost 30 minutes for the "Preparing for export" slip to disappear, then I canceled the
operation.

6) Trying to install the latest OS patch using NCU says "waiting for Newton device", but nothing
happens. NCU waits indefinitely.

7) Pressing "Backup" on the Newton side of NCU results in "Sorry, a problem has occured (2)".

8) Pressing "Backup" on the PC side of NCU results in "Waiting for Newton device", which I canceled
after about 5 minutes of waiting.

Has anybody seen such a problem before? I am inclined to think that it might be caused by a failed
OS patch update, but to the best of my knowledge the owner has left this Newton without main and
backup battery, which should reliably remove any installed OS patch.

My second guess is that all this might be caused by a flaw in the Notes soup. Is there a freeware or
shareware application that I could install on a card using another 120 and use for checking the
Notes soup of the 120 in question? I do seem to recall some names like e. g. SoupKitchen, but I
haven't a clue how good and easy to use they are, and if they're still commerial software.

Thanks again in advance

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de

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Received on Mon May 11 18:33:11 2009