I've got an ST96812A that I was attempting to load the ROM for onto a new PCB. The PCB worked fine on the drive it belonged to, was detected normally, etc. After using the Salvation tool to upload the patient ROM to it, it now detects as MASKROM instead of MERC2. For the purposes of experimentation I took a functional ST96812A, saved the ROM, re-uploaded the same ROM, and the drive now detects as MASKROM. To me this implies that the Salvation tool is incorrectly uploading the ROM or corrupting it in the process.

Any other thoughts?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Indeed, examining the ROM after uploading something, the ROM contents do not even closely match the file that was uploaded. I have monitored the commands that are being sent when uploading. Anyone who knows more about uploading ROM through terminal please PM so we can compare what it is doing with what it should be doing.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

It doesn’t surprise me with the poor ROM support on the WD doctor that the Seagate would have problems. I would say, ask Rocky and the gang, but they usually answer quickly and rarely ever fix anything. Good luck.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Had to flash a mercury recently...

F>d400,0
sdld rom image
F>f
ok
ok
ok
.
.
.


So I guess you should change the 400 to read buffer for merc2

Yeah, I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. At least in the case of Seagates it should be pretty straightforward to implement a workaround.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Well ,
I Had a Word With Thier Fellow Called Alex ,thier Seagate tool stinks old shitty interface and no documentation for the terminal commands ,If You Do Not Now how the seagate family works how the hell are you going to repair one ,Also How Can they Foolishly Assume Newbies Do .

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

not to read buffer but to flash buffer

different families have different flash buffers and that's why it is easy to screw up ROM when you writing and using incorrect SDLD buffer for flash
I guess the reason why SD does it incorrect hides in early versions of PC3K which were obviously "researched" (or should I say copypasted) by SD guys
PC3K still has problems with some Seagate families ROM writings but I think AceLab fixed Merc2

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Well, with collaboration from viktdev (thanks!) I have worked out the issue and gotten my tester drives back up and functional. Turns out Salvation is just doing it wrong.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

My SD tools give me a lot of cruppted ROMs in Seagate and WD...
Keep hearing that they were working on and improving it but I haven't seen much lately.

It is a bit disapointing.

I won't even attempt to write to rom on a WD with SD, until
they solve this problem.Original WD dr worked great, but all the
latest updates don't properly write (actually they don't properly
read the roms)

Now days, I'm using the actual external ROM writer to read and write ROMs. HD DR killed a lot of good PCBs by not be able to property write to the ROMs... But it does work well on Royl for some features!!!

My external writer that they sent has never worked properly. I don't think I have ever used it successfully.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Yep, I gave up on the external writer, never worked properly. It would only write every other byte.

SD's answer was "well, our test one works"

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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I resume this old post to write that I have the same problem with a ST9250827AS .
did a safety copy of donor and patient ROM and then Swapped heads
After that, i needed, for some other reasons, to put back the original ROM readed with SD tool for seagate.
Now terminal show such MASKROM problem.
Some of you knows how to bypass or to solve this problem?
Please, PM me for solutions, if any.
Thank you

You'll have to send the rom image with the sdld protocol at the good flash buffer adress. I don't know if sd dr seagate will do it from terminal....

If you don't want to research - programmer will help you

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.