Decompiling PowerHouse 7.29

[Robert Mills]

Hi Mark,

> Just a slim hope - did you do any debugging with the PowerHouse debugger
at
> any time?  If so, are there still any .qkl files lying around?  These will
> contain the source code for the matching .qkc [possibly including bugs,
> too:-)] if you have them.

No debug files, they were all purged when the system went live.

> Of course if you don't have the source for your dictionary, that's easy to
> re-create.  Go into qshow and use the 'generate all' command - this will
> re-create the dictionary source in a file called qshogen.pdl.  Shame you
> can't do the same for Quiz, Qdesign and QTP!

The loss of the dictionary source is not a problem as it was only three
lines
of code. The last change to the system was to migrate it from Image to
Allbase.

It's the twenty-three Qdesign/Quick programs that concerns me.

> On a different tack, you mentioned you have a unix machine [sorry, I mean
> U*ix :-)].  Have you tried to read the tape with the unix dd command,
using
> the noerror switch?  You might be able to use this to read the contents of
> the tape to a file on disk, ignoring bad blocks. (eg dd if=/dev/rmt/0m
> of=tapefile noerror).  If you can get this far, you may be able to read
the
> disk file using tar or cpio [or maybe not], or if all else fails, use sed
to
> plough through it looking for chunks beginning with SCREEN and ending with
> BUILD, writing each one to a different file.

Already tried this. Had given the DAT to somebody who had access to a U*ix
box.
Told that the tape was well-and-truly £$%*ed.

Looks as if the drive gave up doing its LAST :STORE as this was the last
tape
cut before the machine (a 918LX) was decommissioned. Should have done a
verify
on this tape when I did it for the two full backups.

And before you ask - NO. They are not available either. Was told that
somebody
recycled ALL the 918's DAT tapes. Thought they would not be needed anymore.

> Good luck!

Thanks, I need it.

regards,
Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Mills [mailto:robert.mills@windsong-services.co.uk]
Sent: 10 April 2001 14:27
To: 'PowerHouse List'
Subject: Decompiling PowerHouse 7.29


Hi all,

I wrote a fault logging system several years ago that I want to update.
Problem is the DAT it was stored on has a media fault. I've got the
dictionary and compiled files off OK but the sources are unreadable. The
company I worked for at time was taken over and the original HP3000 systems
were replaced by U*ix, therefore the original sources are now gone. Is it
possible to do any form of decompile to enable me in the rewrite of this
system?

FWIW It's good to have access to this list again, got a bit lonely without
it.

regards,
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|Robert W.Mills (Systems Development Manager) |
|Windsong Services, St. Mary Cray, ENGLAND    |
|Tel  : +44 (0)1689 870622 x3005              |
|Fax  : +44 (0)1689 899026                    |
|Email: Robert.Mills@windsong-services.co.uk  |
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