I work in the amusement industry repairing coinop games. We have a lot of Merit countertop touchscreen games with custom versions of the notorious Maxtor Fireball 3 and 541DX drives. One firmware that comes to mind is VAM51JJ0.

How did Merit modify the BIOS ID string to come up as "Merit 0010" or similar instead of the standard descriptor? They did this to key the drives to the games, so when it goes bad you have to pay them $200 plus for new one instead of using an off the shelf drive. Then they just send another drive of the exact same model, and it goes bad after about a year. Doing this does not prevent piracy of the games, they have special security keys and custom boards in them anyway.

Is there anything I can do to fix these drives without breaking the bank? When they go bad, the BIOS detects them as Maxtor Athena or Maxtor Ares C64. I have about 10 of them piled up here waiting to be fixed. I think these are one type of drive that is worth more for the scrap metal

u can fix these harddrives they have firmware problem that can be fixed by Pc3000 isa or pci

u can fix the drive "MAXTOR ATHENA" from salvation software..

http://www.salvationdata.com

download maxtor firmware repairer..

Tried the Salvation Data utility, it just locks up after the third fix out of 4 or something like that. I don't have PC3000, and can't afford it at the moment.

try HDD REPAIR

did u use that in safe mode the salvation utility . it works !

I did use safe mode, but had no luck. I'll try it again on a different computer sometime soon.

Is HDD REPAIR a freeware program? I can't find it anywhere. If it is freeware can someone send it to me or post a link?

I would LOVE to have PC3000 PCI, but it costs more than I make in a year

change your job, dude
it sucks

HDD repair is free but illegal .