The freak DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB HD

[Averance]

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133 HD that failed me and I'm finding that it is a rare one. It's firmware code is YAR41KWO, witch I hear is rare. From what I can tell the problem with my HD is in the board. When I took it into work to get an image of it made to put on a new hard drive the board smoked and I found a hole in one of the chips. After that it wouldn't spin up, at least not until I put another board on it, not a matching one but it spun up and made some clicking noises. I attribute those to the fact that the boards didn't match up. Has anyone heard of another 80gb with that code? From what I can tell most are BWO instead of KWO.

I even looked on ebay and found someone that sells those boards, and they were helpful enough to do some looking and he was as baffled as I was. The system he used to replace boards involved matching the number on the large chip (040111300), seeing if there is a chip above the large one near the top of the board (mine has one) and matching the code number. According to him, mine should have a chip there....

What is going on? I know how to fix this I just can't find any information on this freak drive. Did I miss a recall or did I buy a computer with the loch ness monster of hard drives?

[pepe]

Hi
Please post a Hi-Res picture of your board to see who's on board

pepe

[Averance]

Here are a few, I hope they are good enough. If they aren't I'll see what I can do.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3255/2415844186_51fb911bc6_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2345/2415844440_341d2d2e0d_b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3126/2415844940_34ce48110c_b.jpg

In image 2 you can see the whole that got burned out of the chip, it is in the leftmost large chip, the square one. Made that oh so lovely burn smell. Please let me know if you need anything else.

edited to change one from a thumbnail link to a full image
edited to increase image size

[pepe]

Hi

As I see this is pretty unique indeed. U 401 is not installed, so ROM swapping is not an option here.
I tell U what I would do in this case:
1. check wether the preamp is OK inside the HDA,
2. if OK, I would check Q500 on the burnt board, if not, replace that, and
3 I would replace the burnt motor controller (U500) and hope the Ardent is OK.
BTW there are method to check wether Ardent (U301) is working at least at basic level, to do this it is neccessary to remove U500, give 3.3V to the proper pin of Q501, check wether the oscillator is working (on the terminals of Y301), then give it a POR and see wether there is some activity on the address and data buses (on the RAM's pins).

It is possible though that a PCB with the same processor will work, but when it is not available...

pepe

[Averance]

Thanks for the info, but I'm not sure I follow. I wasn't sure what to make of it so I took it to my boss at computing help desk at my college and he said it was above his head too. I guess at this point all I can ask is if you can put it in a way I can understand it or point me to a website that help me out. Any other input would be greatly appreciated.

[pepe]

Hello,

Well, if it is not giving U a clue I suppose U are not familiar with electronics repairs and measuring instruments.
In this case all U can do is wait for a compatible drive or take the drive to a pro.

pepe

[Averance]

Thanks for your help. It seems that is all I can do. I may take it to a shop somewhere or make some calls. Again if anyone has any ideas or tips on where I can get a new PCB that would be a great help. Try googling YAR41KW0....just try it and you will know how hard it is to find.

[gsimon]

first:

1. check wether the preamp is OK inside the HDA,

if it is OK

you can use some other pcb (from hdd with code YAR41BW0):
F4FYA
K2FYA
L6FYA
M6FYA
M8FYA
etc....

[rameez]

I have pcb with Agere Ardent C8-c1 i think it will work with ur drive . Where are u based ?