NeoPhyx

Have you tried inverting the Tx and RX? (just to make sure, you didn't mention this) jaclaz Thanks jaclaz. I tried that initially before the first post, and it didn't work, but I must done something wrong, because when I read your reply, I thought I better try it one more time just to be sure and I got the F3 T> prompt right away. I followed through the instructions and got all my files copied off the 7200.11 on to my external backup. Success. Thanks again. N

Hi there, First thanks to all the primary contributors for the great how-to. It gives me hope that I might able to unbrick my drive. I read the read-me-first sticky, however, I'm stuck against a wall with this fix so far. I have a 7200.11 Seagate 500GB HDD. Has the BSY error. Disapeared on start-up one day. Wasn't recognized after that. Spins up when powered up with no weird mechanical noise or any other kind of problems. So I set out to unbrick it. I bought 1)a USB to serial adaptor since I'm using a laptop. 2)the RS232 to TTL shifter from Sparkfun. 3)The breadboard power supply from Sparkfun which supplies both 5V and 3.3V. I installed the drivers for the USB to Serial. It was assigned COM5. I connected pins 2 and 3 (TX and RX) and performed a loopback test using Tera Term. Worked with no problem encountered. I saw what I typed. Local echo was disabled. Then I plugged in the rs232 shifter. I connected the VCC to the 3.3V pin of the power supply. I connected the GND of the power supply to the GND of the rs323 to TLL shifter. I then looped the TX and RX pins and performed another loopback test. Success. As I entered a keystroke, the tx and rx lights on the rs232 ttl shifter would flash and the character was displayed in Tera Term. When I add the hard drive to the mix however it's a different story. I have the 3.3V from the power supply going to the converter. The ground from the power supply goes also to the converter, and i have that tapped off to the hard drive ground as well. So, everything is sharing a common ground. I have RX from the converter hooked up to TX on the HDD. Likewise, I have TX from the converter hooked up to RX on the HDD. I don't have a desktop available so I'm using a SATA power supply that plugs into the wall from an external kit to power the harddrive. When I power both the converter and the HDD, and open Tera Term and connect to serial on COM5 with 38400 8N1N, I get a white screen with a black cursor. I hit control-z and nothing happens. I can see the little green TX LED flashing on the converter whenever I hit a key, but I get no response from the HDD and no F3 prompt. I gone over it several times now, and I can't figure out where I'm going wrong. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! N