May I please have some help with TMOS

[l0ft1369]

Hi,

First: I want to say that I really enjoy this forum and have learned A LOT of valuable information since I have been surfing around it. Second: I hate asking a question in a forum where I haven't contributed anything useful but here goes:

I have a Western Digital WD5000AAVS SATA drive. It's brand new and I've phased it out for a 2TB drive. Needless to say I don't really care about this drive and that's why it's my test subject. I would like to gain access to the drive's TMOS so I can become more familiar with it. Yes I am aware that if I throw one incorrect param or I miss a param or if I look at it sideways I will loose everything and brick the drive. I don't care. All I need is the proper serial settings. I've been driving myself nuts for a week on here and google searching around trying to find out what different drives take for different settings. Yes I have a UART device. I got it from sparkfun. It uses the FTL232RL UART to USB. I've tried the age old default of 115200 bps 8 data bits 1 stop bit no flow control. And different permutations there of. I've maxed out hyperterm in terms of bps, and I've even tried different data bit settings (7) and parity bits (EVEN, ODD, and none). All I get is garbage on my terminal... Firmware's not encrypted...right? I've been in TMOS on a much older drive before and came this (_) close to bricking the entire thing... Since then I haven't had time to do anything like this. Yes I know just enough to get myself into trouble (but honestly if it isn't on fire you aren't trying hard enough! ) I have a bus pirate too, but I think I bricked that. Anyhow any advice or even direction I could be pointed towards so I can find what I am looking for would be great. I do this as a hobby and I'm sorry for being a vampire but I'm all out of options!

Thank you in advance!

-L0ft (not ten foot)

[msurgeon]

I assume you're trying to access the firmware on this disk. This is not done through a serial interface but through vendor-specific ATA commands. I assure you that those commands will not be found by surfing here or anywhere else.

[l0ft1369]

Yes I was trying to access the firmware on the hard drive and I'm sure I wouldn't find the ATA commands floating around there; but I was under the impression that you could interface it with a serial device? I am getting output that looks like it wants to be serial (not just stray voltage) from the jumpers on the back of the hard drive it's just not making any sense. I figured it was just a buad problem. but maybe not?

Anyone else?

-JC

[drc]

No, msurgeon is correct.

[l0ft1369]

seagate-7200-1tb-spinup-clicking-spindown-t12769.html

^^^ The above would beg to differ... now if I only had his baud settings...

[drc]

You do realize that Seagate and Western Digital are two different companies, right?

[l0ft1369]

yea I am well aware. but why would I be getting voltage out and output out from my WD? I mean it's got to be some sort of interface. I've hooked my fair share of serial stuff up to just random voltage supplies and other stuff I shouldn't have and I've never gotten output this close to being useful... but if you experts say it isn't so; then asked, answered and I thank you for your input.



-L0ft

[drc]

I'm not saying there isn't an interface, I'm saying its not for what you want it to be for.

[l0ft1369]

ya know that's interesting because the thought crossed my mind that whatever it was that I found was more like stderr than an actual interface. I throw a break at it; and then it pukes out some sort of information or something at me... I don't suppose you'd tell me what that interface is for? or if it is even serial based? At this point I'm over TMOS interfacing and I just want to figure out wth it is... if you won't / can't tell me (which I don't blame you;) is it something I'd be able to find on the net?

Thanks for your help drc; I'm sorry about saying that you were wrong before man

-L0ft

[Clusterox]

Not every drive has an accessible serial interface. WD is one of them.

[Clusterox]

However, for the ones that have, contact me privately for their TMOS commands.