Knowledge of the Ancients--SPARC 20
Hi, I have an unusual question about formatting standards for CDROMS that were made to run on old Sparc 20 machines. Recently I acquired some software written by the wizards at Quickturn (now part of Cadence Designs) called Quest II. It is designed to configure the early FPGAs that were part of the Mercury Series ASIC verification engines. Supposedly the software was read on a Sparc 20 which was linked to the verification engine. The problem that I have is that the CDROM which contains the Quest II software is not being recognized by any of the 386 machines that I have tried to open it. The CD will not even mount. I have tried any number of data recovery programs, but none will even acknowledge that there is a disc in the CD drive. Is this a bonehead question...meaning that only a Sparc 20 can read the CD or can any machine that recognizes the ISO encoding standard read the CD? Do the CDROM reader/writers used with the Sparc 20 adhere to the ISO standard or do they use a different standard? I would greatly appreciate any information on how to access this software so that I can at least make a copy of it.
A friend suggested that the CD had gone bad because the recording process used one of the earliest recording media based on an AZO dye that bleaches with time and temperature. second question: I am sure that the CD was recorded with an AZO dye because it appears blue with a silver reflective layer. Is there any way to recover data from this CD written in 1998?
Any information or help is greatly appreciated!!!! Many thanks!!!
G. Kamin
