WD PCB swap rebuild ROM from SA

[trmpluym]

Hi all,

I have a WD drive (Marvell chip) which i like to recover. I found out the PCB is the problem (I already checked the diodes on the original PCB.). With the original PCB the drive will not spin. When i use the compatible donor PCB the drive spins.

With older drives i was able to exchange the PCB to get the data back. With the newer drives this is not possible anymore because the ROM data is drive specific. I read it is possible to rebuild the ROM from the SA data on the drives. How do i do this ?

I own a PC-3000 portable, an Atola Bandura and a Deepspar imager.

According to Acelabs the PC-3000 is able to read the SA area and read and write the ROM. Hotswapping is not possible but also not necessary.

Any advice ?

[northwind]

Hm, you have all these gizmos and dont know how to make a pcb swap?
Does the pcb have external ROM (@U12) or ..?

[trmpluym]

@northwind: it is a WD Marvell Tahoe LT model. So as far as i know the ROM is integrated.

And you are correct : i am not able to rebuild the ROM info from SA, every body got to learn sometimes

When i select write ROM i can select 'HDD profile files' and 'Database'. Is 'HDD profile files' enough to rebuild the ROM from SA ?

[einstein9]

@northwind: it is a WD Marvell Tahoe LT model. So as far as i know the ROM is integrated.

And you are correct : i am not able to rebuild the ROM info from SA, every body got to learn sometimes

When i select write ROM i can select 'HDD profile files' and 'Database'. Is 'HDD profile files' enough to rebuild the ROM from SA ?

[trmpluym]

@einstein9: not very helpfull

[einstein9]

Am shocked from your comments actually

sorry to tell, but asking this Q really means MOST PROBABLY ur problem is else where really
and no joke.

this is my opinion

and good luck

[Tomset]

On Tahoe LT not modules ROM in SA:
0106: :NOT_INIT:
0106: :NOT_INIT:
0105: :NOT_INIT:
0105: :NOT_INIT:
0104: :NOT_INIT:
0104: :NOT_INIT:
...

[irs]

hi,
tomset is right, on Tahoe LT you can only find mod 109 for rebuild but you will not have the rom modules...
I think mod 47 and 20B, above all, can be a problem; may be you can find a donor close enough for adaptives (if you're lucky) but you will have to struggle with SA position in the 20B.
good luck!

Bye
Luca

[fzabkar]

AIUI, MOD 47 can be regenerated using the mini-ARCO test. There are cheap tools that can do this.

As for MOD 20B, the one in ROM appears to match the one in MOD 109, at least in the following resource set:

http://files.hddguru.com/index.php?acti ... ahoe%20LT&

[trmpluym]

I was able to recover the ROM from the original PCB by separating the pcb from the harddisk.

Despite the errors the PC-3000 was able to backup the original ROM.

After writing the ROM back to an compatible PCB i managed to get the data back !

I was lucky this time because i was unable to find out the right SA position without the original ROM.

Thanks to all who helped me !