Saving an old database from a dead server

[Magnus Ekhall]

Hello,

I am trying to do a rather odd replication of a mysql database and need
some hints.

An old server of mine died horribly during a recent power outage.
It had a mysql 4.1 server. The hardware has just given up, but I have
managed to get all files from the harddrive.

Since the server won't boot I cannot run mysqldump.

I then tried just moving the database files
from /var/lib/mysql/thedatabas onto a fresh install of mysql (in Ubuntu
10.10, so version 5.x), but that did not work.

Can anyone suggest a way to get a dump of my database somehow?

I'm going to set up a new server running a recent version of mysql, so
the equivalent of mysqldump is ideal.

Any ideas at all?

Regards,
Magnus