This drive was manufactured in January 2024, the smooth chip is burned and the area around it.
I have a donor board from April 2024, when moving the ROM chip over to the donor board, the terminal output says Flash boot Code Digital Signature Verification Failure.
Do these newer drives have some kind of signature verification for the ROM? If so any solution for board swap or is repairing the original board the only option?

I believe that the digital signature in the ROM needs to be matched to the MCU. One solution would be to transfer the adaptives, rather than the entire ROM, to a compatible donor PCB. Another solution might be to patch the donor's signature into the patient ROM. I have done the latter for several people, but have never received any feedback, so I don't know if my method works.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here is the patient and donor ROM I am working with. I tried importing adaptives with PC3K but it says unable to setup heads map info.
I'll be for sure to give feedback with any help you provide. You taught me useful info about WD module 109 last week

I've tried manually moving CAP, RAP and SAP over to the donor ROM manually but F3RomExplorer is unable to recalculate CRC. I'm probably doing it wrong. Just trying to learn. Thanks for your help once again.

Donor ROM with patient's RAP/SAP/CAP is attached.

Transferring the digital signature is not necessary because the BOOTFW is the same.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

So that worked, drive boots now, but clicking and servo errors. I guess the power surge made it to the preamp.

So can you tell me how you transferred the adaptives over successfully? Am I wrong for trying to use F3RomExplorer?

I used F3RomExplorer to tell me where the RAP/SAP/CAP segments were located, and then I used a hex editor (HxD) to do the patching.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

After manual patching do you have to recalculate CRC?

No, the CRC is included in the segment. For example, the RAP is located at 0x80000 and has a size of 0xB6000. Just carve out this area from the patient and paste it into the donor.

BTW, you can measure the resistance of the preamp's positive and negative supplies. That will tell you if it is shorted. If you upload a photo of the HDA pads, I can show you where to measure.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Unfortunately I don't have access to a camera. Not allowed due to data privacy rules.
Even posting ROMs on here for help is a big gray area for me but I want to learn.

The board is a 100870255 REV A.

Test This ROM if possible.

U have to use the same donor PCB as mentioned Donor ROM