Please use brain. Connecting tx to tx is a nonsense. rx to rx is another one. One device RXs the data the other one TXs.

to test your adapter you can bridge its tx to rx and open the com port in the terminal program of your choice. you should see the chars you type in the terminal as they come back on the rx line. (without local echo)
this must work. At any baud rate.

then connect it to the hdd of your choice and use proper baud rate (38400 for 7200.2).
the PL2303 is just as fine as max232, even better when it comes to high BRs. I think 7200.2 uses 2.5V io, 3.3V should be just as fine on low speeds.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Bridged Tx and Rx and opened up PuTTY. Pressed some keys and they were mismatched. Q was G, K was J, so I guess it broke itself. Weird how it was working fine when I got it. Followed the steps in the tutorial here. Also got access to SMART data through Victoria. What I found is, when scanning the drive, I could get some readable sectors when I spammed RESET button (getting ABORT errors without spamming RESET.).

What I can't understand is if I should use 3.3v or 5v on seagate drive. Tutorial says to connect MAX232 to 5v while fzabkar says 3.3v should be ok. Anybody can confirm what voltage to use?

measure the io voltage on the patient disk and use that on your adapter, that's the most secure way. As electronics developed, Vccio levels got lower, older families used 3.3V, later they witched to 2.5V, and from like the 2010's roughly they used 1.8V.

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Problem is, I'm getting 4.8v and 3.3v where Tx and Rx should go.

then use 3.3V

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Unlocked it. It turns out it needs 5v TTL, not an 3.3v.