macola 6.2 server crashed! need CHEAP solution

[twelper]

OK. I work for a very small, struggling company. We are running Macola 6.2, Btrieve/Pervasive 6.15 and Novell Netware 4.11. The hard drive on the server is junk.
We'll have to send it to a data recovery place because we don't have a current back-up. I'm assuming we'll have to reinstall Macola, Netware and Pervasive - but we no longer have the Macola 6.0 installation disks and I don't believe we got any disk when the 6.2 upgrade was made. The company doesn't want to hire anyone to configure a new hard drive onto the server. They prefer the DIY approach. Most of this will fall on my shoulders. I'm sure I've left a lot of stuff out but if anyone has any comments or questions please reply.

 

[stravis]

I wish you the best of luck. I'm afraid that there is no easy way out of this one. Has your company been keeping current with it's Macola Maintenance Fees? If so you should be able to get the disks from Macola Business Partner. If not then no one here could lawfully provide those disks for you.

Anyway you look at this it is probably going to cost a lot of time and money to get out of this one. It is very possible that your hard drive is DOA and you will not be able to recover your data. Perhaps your company should consider a non-IT solution for running the company if they are not willing to invest in the necessary resources.

 

[twelper]

Thanks for the quick reply Stravis. We do have a Macola 7.0 CD. We were going to be a test site for it but I believe there were still some bugs in it so we never ran it.
If we're able to recover the data, will 7.0 run with the Pervasive 6.15 and Netware 4.11??

 

[stravis]

Macola 7.0 is not year 2000 compliant. Also, you would need a license and a conversion tool for converting the data from Macola 6.2 to Macola 7.0. It took some time before Macola was able to produce a working tool, also the Macola 7.0 product never really worked well until 7.5.102, which is much later than your current version. As far as stability is concerned Macola 6.2 is much better than Macola 7.0.

I might suggest that you consider purchasing Elliot as an alternative to Macola. Elliot is much cheaper and provides a direct upgrade path from Macola 6.2. Elliot is developed by Netcellent Systems, and is the Macola DOS product that Macola sold to Netcellent, so that they could continue development. I myself don't work directly with this product, but this is the product that many Macola 6.2 users took in order to avoid the high maintenance fees required by Macola 7.0 and above. You can find this product at

http://www.elliot.com.

 

[dgillz]

Your best bet is to work with your Macola reseller, and get your boss to open his wallet, a little bit at least. If you own Macola 6.2 I am sure they can get you another CD.

If this event doesn't teach the value of backups and investing at least minimally in IT, I am not sure what does.

Good Luck

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[twelper]

I don't actually work in IT cough cough. Just another hat I have to wear. I was backing up macola and btr. files with a CD until the burner started giving me problems. Anyway, I did find the macola disks!!! I have the Pervasive disks. I don't know if I have all the novell disks. Hmmm...I'll need DOS too. Now we're waiting for the data recovery specialist to give us some good news. Once we get the data back we'll have to decide if were going to attempt all the installations ourselves or hire someone to do it.

 

[stravis]

If the data recovery specialists are able to recover your whole Macola install, then you will not need to worry about install Macola on the server. You can just place the original Macola directory on to your new drive, and setup all your security and mappings in Novell. The only item that does need to be "installed" on the server is Btrieve. If your Macola programs were damaged in any way, you will have to use your install disks.

 

[kscheeler]

Not to burst your bubble but one of my clients lost multiple drives in their RAID array and the only backup available was 3 months old. The data recovery place they sent it to quoted around $14,000 to recover the data. The quote was either take whatever we can get or nothing at all. They decided to recreate the 3 months of work manually.

You should be able to get a 6.2 CD from Macola direct if you can't get one from a local reseller. You could run it locally on a DOS, Win95 or Win98 computer since it comes with a local version of Btrieve (single user). It would be much slower though.

How old is your latest backup?

Kevin Scheeler

 

[dgillz]

Sounds like I need to be in the data recovery business.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[maccrystal]

Since version 6.x was written in MicroFocus Cobol the only place you will be able to find replacement CD's is though a reseller. Exact Software can no longer distribute code using that compiler. Version 6.3 is no longer supported by Exact, that means no PayRoll or AP 1099 updates. As STRAVIS suggested Elliott is your best alternative and it is supported. Elliott 7.1 does required PSQL2000i or Pervasive V8. Elliott 7.1 will not work with Btrieve 6.15. The move to Elliott will not be inexpensive either. I may even have the 6.3 CD but will not make any promises. We support Netcellent and can discuss the options if intrested.

http://www.appstratinc.com

 

[twelper]

Thanks for all the interest in this. I did find the full Macola 6.2 CD. The data recovery ppl are coming on Monday.
I got recovery quotes ranging from $350 to $1500. It's only a 4g drive with about 1g of data. The recovery ppl say they'll try to "ghost" everything to a new drive so I wont have to reinstall everything. I'll keep y'all posted.

 

[vbajock]

Just a suggestion: write your backups to a local hard drive and then burn them to a CD from there. That's probably the best solution for a cash strapped outfit that can't afford a tape drive.

 

[twelper]

Here's the final word: We were unable to ghost a new hard drive. This meant we would have had to reinstall Netware 4.11, Macola 6.2 and Btreive 6.15 on a new DOS server.
This would have required us to hire a pro to reinstall and configure Netware - big bucks!
What did we do?? Purchased Quickbooks Premeire 2003 5-user.
It's very limited compared to Macola. Now we have to load 1000 skus, 300 customers, 100 Accts Payable...
Is there a quickbooks forum here????
Thanks again.

 

[abaldwin]

Have you counted your "cost savings" yet? That sounds like a lot of man hours to convert to QuickBooks plus loose the functionality.

sounds like you need to do a needs/cost analysis.

Andy

Andy Baldwin

 

[twelper]

Luckily, I had an inventory item list from Crystal Reports that I had exported as an Excel file before the crash. Crystal Reports was the only thing I used from our aborted Macola 7.0 trial.
I also had a quantity price break list in Excel. I was able to combine these to make a complete item file. I then set-up the data and imported it into Quickbooks. That was a huge chunk of the work. Also, our business is seasonal and we're coming into our slow season. Plenty of time for data entry. I wish we had more time to review some other products, but we really needed to get something up and running. Once we have all the data in Quickbooks, we might switch to something else - as long as we can import the .IIF files!