MAH

I did a loop back test and it was ok. I have restored my hdd back to normal . The problem was the ground wire on the usb pcb had come off thats why I was getting the wierd characters in hyperterminal. After soldering that back on and making sure all the wires were ok with a multimeter I followed the steps correctly and it worked. All my files are still there, I took a back up just in case. Thank you guys for all the help. One thing I wanted to make sure is that I need to do a firmware update on the hdd. Does the SD1A firmware fix this problem from ever happening again?

Sorry about that. The cable has three wires the pin layout is the same as the link. pin 6 - rxd - blue pin 7 - txd - red pin 8 - gnd - orange I checked on the USB side and the ground wire was abit loose. I resoldered that. I will test it on the hdd. I will let you know how I get on.

This is the type of CA-42 cable I have. http://img26.imageshack.us/i/15784923.jpg/ http://img810.imageshack.us/i/82528310.jpg/

@ VideoRipper: Firmware SD25 is affected and can be corrected with this procedure @MAH: Pin12??? You should use pin 6,7&8 see link in my post earlier on the page. If your computer sees the cable without anything connected to it and install drivers for it, there is a very good chance the cable will work, otherwise try another cable or the recommended method. When I cut open the CA-42 cable the wire pins were originaly pin 12 - blue pin 4 - red pin 6 - orange My computer recoginzed the cable and installed the driver. In device manager it was installed like another com port. Do I need to desolder the wires and solder them to the correct pin layout - pin 6,7 and 8? or is the pins which were originaly set when the cable arrived are the correct layout - because my pc installed it. I will try the pins 6,7 and 8 and let you know what I get.

I have a Seagate St3500820AS 500GB 7200.11 SD25 firmware hard drive. I had it connected as a internal drive for extra storage. I used a pci to sata card to connect the drive. About a week ago I turned my pc on and it froze at the splash screen where it says windows xp with the blue bar going across. After a few test I disconnected the seagate drive and my pc booted up fine. I have another drive connected the same way through the sata to pci card, I switched the cables around to see if thats the problem but it froze again at the windows xp splash screen. I read the forums and tried the solution. I had a max232 adaptor I connected the hard drive to it and used 2 AA batteries to power it. When I press ctrl Z i get nothing in hyperterminal I double checked all cables and reversed the tx/rx still nothing. I also tried it with the nokia CA-42 cable its got 3 cables blue, red and orange. I tried a loopback test and when I connect the blue and red wires together I get these wierd characters in hyperterminal without typing anything. Assuming that the blue and red wires are the tx/rx and orange being ground I tried again but I still didn't get an response when pressing ctrl Z. I switched the cables around but still no luck. The pin layout for the CA-42 cable is: blue - pin 12 orange - pin 6 red - pin 4 Is there anything I'm doing wrong? Do I need to get a proper RS232 to TTL adaptor? Is the CA-42 cable that I have one of the working ones?

I have a Seagate St3500820AS 500GB 7200.11 SD25 firmware hard drive. I had it connected as a internal drive for extra storage. I used a pci to sata card to connect the drive. About a week ago I turned my pc on and it froze at the splash screen where it says windows xp with the blue bar going across. After a few test I disconnected the seagate drive and my pc booted up fine. I have another drive connected the same way through the sata to pci card, I switched the cables around to see if thats the problem but it froze again at the windows xp splash screen. I read the forums and tried the solution. I had a max232 adaptor I connected the hard drive to it and used 2 AA batteries to power it. When I press ctrl Z i get nothing in hyperterminal I double checked all cables and reversed the tx/rx still nothing. I also tried it with the nokia CA-42 cable its got 3 cables blue, red and orange. I tried a loopback test and when I connect the blue and red wires together I get these wierd characters in hyperterminal without typing anything. Assuming that the blue and red wires are the tx/rx and orange being ground I tried again but I still didn't get an response when pressing ctrl Z. I switched the cables around but still no luck. The pin layout for the CA-42 cable is: blue - pin 12 orange - pin 6 red - pin 4 Is there anything I'm doing wrong? Do I need to get a proper RS232 to TTL adaptor? Is the CA-42 cable that I have one of the working ones?