Hi there,

I received a very old 2.5'' IBM DBCA-204860 4.86 GB for data recovery and connected it to my dock for IDE drives.
It is not spinning, nor giving any sign of life. There is also no buzzing noise like in the case of heads stuck.

See the bottom drive and pcb on the attached picture.

I can confirm that other hard drives are working fine with the same dock.

I also tested the drive in other IDE to USB enclosures, with same result.

As assuming a possible PCB issue, I ordered a PCB, originating from a 6.49 GB IBM DBCA-206480 hard drive, the top one in the attached picture. The purpose was here only to test is the drive would spin when powered on with a board that I assumed as compatible for this only task.

Despite the boards have different numbers (110 11K2366 01) for the 4.86GB patient and (110 36H4834 01) for the 6.49GB donor, they seem sharing a very similar design.

The hard drive still doesn't give any sign of life with the board I purchased.

The MCU on both boards are same:


The HSA chip is same as well:

The SRAM chip is same on both boards: Sanyo LC324265AT-25

The chip from Texas Instruments is labeled TLS2245 in both cases ; 1st line differ however

The 6-legged TDK 40.0M chips are same.

I notice that the 6-legged TDK 33.3M chips are same but soldered with opposite orientations.
Likely only capacitor, but I am not totally sure about that.

When each PCB is detached from the HDD and powered on, I measure no voltage at each of the 4 motor-pins, below the square-shaped hole.

Of course, since I only acquired a PCB so far, I cannot be totally sure that it is in good condition.

But before getting another donor, I wonder is these antique IBM hard drives had something special, like needing some data signal or else before they start spinning, and if this serie was affected by some typical failure.
Maybe a few veterans here remember ...

Any other suggestion?
Maybe injecting some small current through the motor pins to test if the motor spins?

Thank you.

"33.3M" (Y2) is a 33.3MHz crystal. TDK is the manufacturer.

If the drive is waiting for a spin-up signal or command, it should still identify itself via an ATA Identify Device command, I would think.

Did you measure the resistances of the motor windings (phase-to-common and phase-to-phase)?

Did you check the fuses? F1 and F2 are near the top right corner of the IDE header while F3 is above and to the left of the motor controller.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you very much for the useful help.

Maybe is this hard drive expecting some spin-up signal.

I didn't check the fuses yet ; I will do it tomorrow.
What I can say so far is that there is no ozone smell.

The resistances of the motor windings were not checked so far.

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply.

I did a continuity check of all three F1, F2 and F3 fuses. My multimeter beeps for for each fuse: continuity is OK for all three fuses, on both PCBs.

I am not sure about the procedure for phase-to-common and phase-to-phase testing, but I measured the resistances at the motor connector pins (those who connect to the PCB). They are either 2.65Ω (+/- 0.05Ω) or the double 5.3V (+/- 0.1Ω).
I compared with sightly more recent tested IBM Travelstar, and ─ although the pinout is different, with larger pads ─ the measured values are same (2.7 and 5.4V). So I presume the motor is OK.

I did one additional check inserting the drive directly in a working Acer Aspire 1200 series (almost as antique, from the Windows XP era): the HDD doesn't spin after powering the laptop on. I could check by not closing the HDD niche and check with my finger that there was no vibration.

I had wrongly measured VDC instead of VAC.
Testing PCB motor pins on PCBs from working 10GB or 20GB IBM Travelstar DJSA drives, I measure voltages around ~0.13-0.15 V(AC) with my Fluke 70, and similar value at 130 millivolt with a more accurate Fluke 87 (True RMS) multimeter.
For the PCB of the IBM Travelstar 4.86GB DBCA series, I measure voltages of only 3-7 millivolts ; and same for the donor board.

Additionally, when connecting the PCBs (alone) from working drive are connected to my Sharkoon QuickPort Combo hard drive docking station, its diodes are "Blue/ Blue" (i.e. OK), whilst for the not spinning drives the diodes are "Blue/Red", typical of defective drives.

So, I presume the received hard drive has a dead PCB board, and the board received being also defective.
I noticed that the Bluestork enclosure in which I received the hard drive is not keyed and you can easily accidentally offset the HDD by one pin.
As I tested the HDD directly with my docking station cable hardness, I didn't pay attention whether the HDD has possibly been wrongly inserted by the client. There are however no visible burnt components nor smell of anything.

If you have an oscilloscope, I would look for activity at the address and data bus of the DRAM. Also check the two crystals (with a high impedance probe).

I think the MCU is a 16-bit type with mask ROM. All the major ICs appear to be powered from +5V. I can't recognise any regulators, although there is an 8-pin IC and a SOT23-5 IC near the HDA connector. I don't know what these do.

The information I have been able to find is sparse.

M37952M4B-2202RP, Mitsubishi, MCU, QFP-144 - probably a 7902 Series 16-bit, 5V microcontroller with mask ROM (F versions have flash, S versions have external ROM/Flash)
https://www.datasheetarchive.com/?q=M379

TLS2245, Texas Instruments, Servo-Combination Driver, 5V, 56-pin:
https://www.hddoracle.com/download/file.php?id=10532
https://www.datasheetarchive.com/datasheet?id=58ac27cc3429e0efd7690a0699f2fccb7f95db&type=M&term=tls2245

LC324265AT-25, Sanyo, DRAM, 4Mbit (256K x 16), 5V, 40/44-pin:
https://audiocircuit.dk/downloads/hhb/HHB-CDR830-cdr-sm.pdf (pinout on page 22)
https://audiodna.sk/de/download?task=download.send&id=3196&catid=90&m=0 (pinout on page 10)
https://cdn3.guidessimo.com/view/1039185/sanyo-dvd-sl20v-service-manual-46.pdf
http://d.520101.com:81/tvpdf/dvd/2/14041115455663.pdf

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.