just signed up to say thanks to all contributors to this thread & post about the odd issues i ran into as it might help someone else first off, I went the (generic) CA-42 cable route & connected the TX & RX up to a reset switch cable from an old PC case (with blutac), then used a connector from a cracked open CD audio cable to hook up the GND pin. The cable making bit alone took me a couple of hours with a scalpel & google... luckily they used the USB-standard wire colours. I couldn't install the CA-42 drivers on Win7x64 so had to use a 32bit Vista laptop - no hyperterminal on vista, so I downloaded it & Tera Term. No sata on the laptop, so had to power the HD from the PC. TX / RX loopback test worked, but couldn't get a hyperterminal or teraterm connection to the HD at all. Spent HOURS messing about with TX/RX, checking pins, com port settings but none of it worked. Eventually remembered Win7's XP mode. Fired up the XP virtual machine & it detected the CA-42 cable & installed the drivers. Opened hyperterminal and it connected first time. Followed this tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29FztWJVxbM and all was good. Winner.