Thanks a million for pointing me in a good starting direction.  Really appreciate your time!!

Thanks for the reply.

The backup is auto generated by his legacy software, and named with a .bak extension.  Opening it in notepad shows a mixture of binary symbols and some...

The backup is auto generated, so I only know it is 'SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition'
Thanks for the suggestion, but the 'HEADERONLY' command generates the exact same error.