Moving BIOS from Donor PCB to Recovery HDD?

[chrisimpact]

Hi all,

I'm in Leeds, UK and struggling to find somebody who can help me move the BIOS/NVRAM chip from a Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 hard drive PCB onto a new donor unit I have purchased... I was hoping the drive may work without the IC move but sadly it does now spin up but is not detected by the computer.

Can anybody help me out with a local or on-line vendor who provides this service ? I really don't fancy the hot air gun myself despite having some limited electronics and soldering experience.

Would be extremely grateful for any help on this matter, so thanks in advance.

All the best,
Chris

[lcoughey]

I don't think this is anything that most data recovery labs want to bother with. If you are just looking to get the NVRAM chip physically moved from one PCB to the other, find your local TV repair guy. Just remember, any damage to that chip will drastically reduce your chance of a successful recovery by a pro and significantly increase their fees, too.

[chrisimpact]

Is it really something a simple TV repair guy can do successfully? I rang round a few places this morning and some of them seemed to think this was a job I'd have trouble finding a shop in the COUNTRY that would take on?!

Is the soldering not a little smaller than what your average TV repair guy would be used to? I mean I have soldered things myself before but I simply have no idea how to do 8 points of the tiny size on this board, so I'd rather pay somebody else to do it.

I have one offer so far from a Canadian firm, Data Pro Labs, http://www.hdd-parts.com/ - are you familiar with these guys? They say they will do it for $35 but would have done it free of charge had I bought my replacement from them ... I got it from hddzone.com and they have also sent me a non-working board for another HDD as well so I'm not really too happy with them. Wish I had found the guys at onepcbsolution.com earlier I think

[data-medics]

A data recovery firm typically won't even bother to physically transplant it. I know here we just read it in place whenever possible and then program another board using it's code (I'm actually waiting for one to finish writing as I type this).

[fzabkar]

Is it really something a simple TV repair guy can do successfully? I rang round a few places this morning and some of them seemed to think this was a job I'd have trouble finding a shop in the COUNTRY that would take on?!

Is the soldering not a little smaller than what your average TV repair guy would be used to? I mean I have soldered things myself before but I simply have no idea how to do 8 points of the tiny size on this board, so I'd rather pay somebody else to do it.

I have one offer so far from a Canadian firm, Data Pro Labs, http://www.hdd-parts.com/ - are you familiar with these guys? They say they will do it for $35 but would have done it free of charge had I bought my replacement from them ... I got it from hddzone.com and they have also sent me a non-working board for another HDD as well so I'm not really too happy with them. Wish I had found the guys at onepcbsolution.com earlier I think :(

That's why I recommend them.

As for repair guys in the UK, there are plenty of competent techs who hang out at the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. Some even do BGA reballing. Two that come to mind are Nigel Cook and "Arfa Daily".

[pcimage]

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