After reading through this board many times, taking notes, and assembling wires and parts, I was successful! Thank you all very much! I wanted to post some of the problems I had to maybe help someone else. First I had a 500G HD from a new desktop PC HP computer; it has their HP24 firmware and failed in 1 month with both the busy and not recognized by BIOS errors. I used a laptop, a cheap CA-42 cable, the desktops power supply (for the failed hard drive), and some wires. Problems I had were: 1. Hyperterminal on laptop, running XP, would not work--downloaded tera terminal on to the laptop and it worked. See message #1464 page 74. 2. Powering off the hard drive after the "spin up complete" prevented further repairs. I believe the terminal disconnects so I could not do the M0,2,2,,,,,22 command. This is noted by others in post #442 on pg 23. 3. The initial part of the fix did allow the PC's bios to recognized the drive, but it showed 0 bytes. 4. Connecting up cables again I did just the control z to get F 3 T> prompt and entered the m0,2,2,,,,,22 command; and it was completely fixed. Other comments which may be helpful to someone: Used just 3 wires from CA-42, took a while to find correct driver (used version 2.0.0.19), grounding properly will prevent odd characters in the terminal mode, did not use any batteries for 3 volts, hyperterminal could not open COM port-hence used tera terminal, wires from CA-42 worked with TX to TX and RX to RX--at least the way I understood their configuration
