Dear all,

I have a Samsung HM160HC which is not spinning, and is showing BUSY right after powered on, and stays like that forever.
Trying it with a similar board, it does spin up, so I assume it's a PCB fault, so I try to repair it.
I've compared all resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc with a multimeter to the known good one, and found no significant difference anywhere. The three components I could not test are:
-Marvell 88i6723S-BCT1 (no pinout, and BGA)
-TI TLS2502B (no pinout)
-the white SOT23-6(?) packaged component with a marking like "bd."(?) on it (next to the Marvell chip), as I don't know what it is

As I'm getting at least a BUSY, can I assume that the Marvell processor is working?
If so, how come it's not writing anything about the error on the serial port (not a single byte)?

Could you please advise where my reasoning is wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Peter

Hi,

The samsung's pcb is sensitive for exchanging.
Maybe the HDA is assembled with different brand heads, or another version/brand of preamp, or just simple the ROM is not compatible with the MC in the platters.
But as you know allready, the diagnose is free @ my lab, and if i have right, this case is cheap or relatively cheap.

Janos

Hi Janos,

thanks for your reply.
I'm not trying to make it work with the other PCB, as I know it's far from being a good donor. I'm trying to repair the original PCB, so the components should not be incompatible with each other (unless somebody else swapped it before).

Best regards,
Peter

if you want to repair the old pcb, i can imagine 3 options:
1. VCD bad
2. some fuse is blown
3. ROM corruption in MCU (i have no @ hand, i am not sure it is internal or external, but if i have right, it is internal)

Maybe helps....

Janos

+1 extra: this is not the original pcb

Yes it's internal. Is there any way to check if the ROM is corrupted?

Thanks,
Peter

without proper tool, no.

You can only close out the other cases.
If everithing is good in the pcb, but the drive is still busy, than it is ROM corruption.

Janos, thank you very much!

Peter

Damn I am so far... I should have diagnosed it in seconds...

Did you mean method of swap...?

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No. Head check, Rom check and eventually fix it, mc (=sa) check and fix, etc. Need to open only for surface check (scored platter)

What tool do you use to check and fix the ROM inside the Marvell processor? I mean do you have access to Marvell develpoment tools, or you have a different method (own method)?

Thanks,
Peter

Own / proprietary. Note: sometimes the marvell chip fail and it's game over... New pcb req'd.

Thanks for your help! So I can start looking for an exact matching PCB..

Hi,

I have several Samsung HM160HC drives I decided to play around with. I found it interesting to read that these drives have a serial interface and now I would like to listen to it. Can one of you tell me to which pads I need to connect? Any additional information (about the possibilities one has with the serial interface [how to interpret the information the drive sends, terminal commands, etc...] or about the drive itself) would also be great.

Guspi

Have you swapped the TI motor driver IC? I have seen them fail in this model.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Hello, somebody know how I can accesr to ROM in The MCU for HDD Samsung HM121HC, on the chip 88i6723S ? Thank you

reading or writing?

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Adatmentés - Data recovery