I have taken my chances and plugged my test drive trough TTL.
Naturally I couldn't get the terminal to work. Not surprising..
I followed the instructions on how to connect the TTL adapter to the drive Spildit kindly gave me in his first post. I used Putty with the following settings:
Baud - 38400
Data Bits - 8
Parity - None
Stop Bits - 1
Flow Control - None
I have two TTL adapters:
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Based on the CH340 module (
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3276142 ... 4c4dLsQxbf).
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Based on CP2102 (
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3250301 ... 4c4dLsQxbf).
Both of them have two handy LEDs (one for transmission, one for reception) that show you what's happening. I anyway shorted RX and TX on both and tried them directly on terminal. They work!
I made sure both gave 3.3V (the first one can be manually switched to 5V).
I isolated with tape and slightly flatten the connectors to make sure they would adhere to the HDD pins without interference.
I read somewhere Spildit was recommending CP2104 for better compatibility, which seems close to my second adapter, at least name-wise.
So, I open the terminal with the aforementioned settings and then power up the drive. The terminal stays blank. In a following post Spildit was saying to check what log the HDD would be displaying on the terminal.
I had planned to input a few commands listed here:
https://www.data-medics.com/forum/seaga ... 3242a6b8a1. Like Ctrl + a or Ctrl + l which seem to be harmless. Needless to say nothing is showed on terminal when I input those commands. I also tried to give Ctrl + z first and then any other command, but nothing happen. I noticed that when I type ctrl no light is shown on the TX corresponding LED unlike say the z key if I have to input Ctrl + z. Is that normal?
I am still not sure about when to power down the HDD. I assume anytime if nothing is showed on terminal and the heads are parked. I do not know whether I have to wait before or after inputting anything and if yes how long..
Perhaps some of you guys know already what I am doing wrong and if yes hope you can point me in the right direction.
Thank you
