Hi,

Got this WD1200BEVS-60UST0 with PCB model 2061-701499-600 AB.
No spin, completely dead. Diodes are ok. No shorts on power lines. Chips seem to be uncracked.
Plugging PCB only to the PC it's undetected, but that's to be expected cause the FW is on the platters.

Anybody came across this issue or ever fixed it?

It seems like the 1.2v rail is not there... I get 0v on it. And the SMOOTH L720b chip gets warm overtime. Any ideas?

The 1.2V rail is Vcore, in which case the MCU could be faulty. What is the resistance between Vcore and Ground? If it is close to 0, then check the bypass capacitors on this rail for shorts.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Vcore to GND is 92 ohms.
In the meantime I'll check the caps for shorts.

Okay all caps and coils look fine.
Any ideas?

A resistance of ~100 ohm for Vcore is normal. It would appear that the SMOOTH IC is faulty, but check the inductor for continuity.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

All inductors are okay. All show <1 ohm. Do you have any idea if 320gb WD scorpios would have the same IC? It'll be a while tilt I can get a look at my scrap bin.

Okay I found an identical PCB (this one has 500 instead of 600 at the end and came out of an 320gb drive) but has the M on the marvell chip replaced with N. This one does nothing but the marvell chip gets warm when I plug in the sata connector.
fzabkar, Do you know anything else we could do before swapping the SMOOTH IC?

Are you able to reach the SA with a working donor PCB and the demo version of WDMarvel? If you can dump the SA modules in the range from 0x100 to 0x109, then it may be possible to recreate the ROM.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Problem is, the donor has bad heads. The full model of it is WD3200BMVS-11F9S0.

Okay I have tried an PCB from an wd3200budt and it spun! And ofc the heads clicked and at the end of the day head 0 crashed and flew off..... Since that is head 0 the whole FW is located on that side so chances it will works are minimal (1 platter 2 head. And it still clicks now so chances are close to 0.