I'm getting the same arrow -> and would like a bit of confirmation if possible, please. Where you say 'pin 3 in terminal socket' - do you mean pin 3 on the seagate PCB? Pin 3 on the PCB needs to be grounded. I just used the ground from the RS232 TTL power source (3.3v) and made a third jumper wire to go to the third pin on the PCB. Then per Aviko, I then with the power supply off to the computer plugged in the power from the PS to the HDA with PCB attached like normal but no SATA cable and turned the power on to the computer PS. Then I put the battery to the 3.3v into the holder to power the RS232 TTL with everything hooked up to my computer serial port and hit connect in hyper termial. I went from the farking arrow to the actual text. Once I did that, I knew I had the right setup and everything was talking. Then turned off hyper terminal, turned off the computer PS (CPS) and pulled out the battery from the TTL board. THEN I removed the PCB and put thick paper under BOTH the contacts and then replaced most of the screws except for the one that goes to the motor and the PCB board to HDA. Then I restarted the CPS and then put the battery back in and restarted hyper terminal and then followed the instructions to fix the BSY HDA problems. Then I felt whole again because this saved my arse big time! I tried this... and am still getting that same bloody arrow. Zero response from the terminal. This is the 2nd RS232-TTL adaptor I have tried now. I have just found out that the owner of the drive tried to update the firmware. Apparently the update found the drive (LBA 0) and continued with the update - the firmware I get back from the diagnostics is: SD1A. Is the drive now unrecovable - and how come the firmware update went through anyway, without apparently fixing the drive?