thanks guys for the kind words. My mum is doing ok-hospital. Lots of tests etc and she is seeing the heart specialist etc. Amazing she survived the heart attack at age 65. My mums a strong lady mentally and i learnt my "never give up attitude" and "go for broke" attitude from mum. If i had a dollar for every time i heard mum say these 2 x sayings i would be like james packer. lol

Also, i got some good news about my star trek voyager arcade machine, the president of teamplay inc-usa (company who manufactured the machine), wrote back to me this morning and i can purchase a replacement hard drive with all the software loaded on for apx $250. I cant copy the orig hard drive cause there seems to be corrupted files after the power surge. Beaky did say to me originally to take the hard drive out of the machine when it first arrived, and do a back up then, but i was skeptical that pulling the hard drive out and attempting to copy it may stuff something up.

I still have this thought in my head that the software designers did something to protect their software/intellectual property.Surely it cant be copied that easily ? what opinions do u guys have re copying the software, wouldnt it be protected somehow?

anyways, some good news for now.