Even though the old server died, is there not an old back-up that some of the data could be retrieved from??
I saw this topic
http://www.basic4ppc.com/forum/forum-discussion/22-retrieving-old-forum-postings.html which refers to cached remains of the old forum scattered across Google etc.
It's a pity to think that all that knowledge has been lost and we have to start again.
Regards,
RandomCoder