Interested in the bowels of the MDB file layout?
MDB Tools is a set of open source libraries and utilities to facilitate exporting data from MS Access databases (mdb files) without using the Microsoft DLLs. Thus non Windows OSs can read the data. Or, to put it another way, they are reverse engineering the layout of the MDB file. Download the file and open the hacking file.
We know that a number of outfits, such as Peter Miller's PK Solutions and other Access repair facilities do understand the layout to some or a great extent. Peter has stated that having an older uncorrupted copy of the MDB, without the data but with the tables if I recall correctly, does help him with retrieving the tables.