recovering database from a linux file system

All,

We recently had a server crash at my company which contained a program to
monitor various network devices around the world. Of course the server was
sitting in a dusty closet somewhere and the owner is long gone from the
company, so we can't find where any backups were stored. At any rate,
starting up the server reveals a completely locked down setup with no OS
access. The only way to access the machine is over the network. Now, any
access attempt over the network causes the machine to lock up/freeze.
Trying to move the HDD to another machine only led us to the conclusion
(later confirmed by the vendor) that the appliance is hardware-locked.

The vendor won't give us any way to access the machine and retrieve the DB,
so I removed the HDD and connected it to my Linux laptop. I was able to
grab all the DB files and copy them to my Windows desktop, where I then
installed PostgreSQL 9.0 (to match the version that was on the server) with
pgAdmin III. I changed the default directory to the folder containing the
DB files using this tutorial:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Change_the_default_PGDATA_directory_on_Windows

...but when I try to start the DB after this, pgAdmin hangs for a few
seconds, then gives the message "Starting Service....Done", but the server
doesn't actually start and I can't access the DB. At this point, I'm
guessing there may be some incompatibility between the default PostgreSQL
implementation and whatever the vendor did when putting together their
product. That being said, is there any way to resurrect a DB from its
component files?

Thanks,

Alka Gupta