🚀 go-pugleaf

Ok, so, I stay home for ONE sick day, and when I come back, the boss tells me
that his computer is dead.  This is what it says:  Missing Operating System.

Ok, no problem.  I try to boot from a floppy.  Works.  Access C drive.  Works.
Do a directory of C?  Invalid Media Type.  Darn.  Try to SYS from A to C?
Write failure.  

What I figure happened is this (figured, with a little help from PCTOOLS):  
Somehow, he managed to COMPLETELY trash his boot sector. A status report of 
whatever PCTOOLS thought his hard disk was showed things such as the 
following:

	0 - bytes total disk space
178,327,832 - bytes in 0 files and 0 directories   <-- Its NOT a 178M disk!
-,178,327,832 - bytes available on disk

	512 - bytes in each sector
	  0 -sector in DOS boot record
  	  0 - sectores in each FAT ( 0 copies )
	  0 - sectors in root directory (0 entries)
 	  0 - sectors in logical disk

	00h - media descriptor
	12 bit - File Allocation Tables
	0 - bytes in each allocation unit (cluster)
	0 - sectors in each allocation unit (cluster)
	0 - total allocation units for data storage
 
Logical Drive C: is accessed as a device driver.

FDISK shows a recognized partition of the correct size, (102M), but says 
"system: UNKNOWN".

My question:  We don't want to completely reformat this disk, there's alot 
of information on it that we hope not to lose.  I would figure that the 
boot sector has been trashed, not the file allocation tables, so maybe 
we can resurrect some of the data.  Does anyone know the best way to tackle
this fairly nasty problem?  Like, can I get to the hard disk to write a new
media descriptor?  How would I go about doing that?

Any suggestions, other than to back up the computer more frequently, greatly
appreciated.  Thank you.

Duane Morin
Software Development Manager
Walker Sonix, Inc.
Worcester, MA 01604
sonix@schunix.uucp
sonix@aol.com