great followup thanks, your worked hard for your data. did you swap roms to the new boards? or at least pull the rom data and re-write it to the new ones? I'm missing something.

The board that worked with ST chip on was p/n 9w2812-351 (as opposed to original p/n 9w2812-301) Firmware was same, 3.18.

I just used that board on the drive, didnt swap any chips or reprogram anything. (I sent them back now, but made a note of that code on a piece of paper, that I just found) - I think the one with the Agere chip was same p/n and firmware, but that didnt work.