bryeds

There is a confirmed case of someone fixing it - this is how I figured out that the baud had to be lowered to 9600 to talk to the 7200.10 drives. This is from last october ... Here's the link: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/133604-seagate-720010-hdds-how-to-fix-bsy-state-too/

Correct

Yes - wanted to blow up the unneeded 7200.10 instead of the 7200.11 I was working on incase I did something wrong! Didn't blow up anything though!

I didn't have a problem with the 7200.10 drive, I just assumed the 7200.10 drive I was testing on would be the same as connecting to the 7200.11. If I fried the 7200.10 by making a bad connection or something, it wouldn't matter, thus the reason to test on it to make sure the cable worked. On the 7200.11 drive the client had a power surge near their home, a transformer literally blew up, knocking out the power. When they turned the computer back on the system appeared to be frozen but I found otherwise after removing the drive. I searched for info about the drive to replace the circuit board and found the information here. Common BSY issue was all. Fixed not with the $6 part w/ $20 shipping but with a $35 cable I got for $8 at a radio shack dealer in town - an amazing feat considering the closest walmart is 45 min away, there's nothing here, but I was able to find that darn usb to ttl cable!

ok, nevermind! Got it all working - it was due to a couple factors. Firstly, the drive I was testing with was a 7200.10 - not a 7200.11 - this means you have to use the baud rate of 9600 instead of 38400. Other thing that was not right was the grounding. It is not at ALL clear what to ground. The cable I used was the 20-047 scanner programming cable from radioshack - they wanted to get rid of it and sold it to me for $8. It has a red, white and ground - the ground is the shield around the cable, black and green inside the cable aren't used and red is rx, white is tx. So - shield = gnd, red = rx, white = tx ... the guide explains to connect the rx and tx clearly and how to do it BUT I had to run a cable from the gnd on the hdd to the gnd coming off the ps of the desktop, then also ground the gnd cable on the adaptor to the same place. Adaptor rx --> tx on hdd Adaptor tx --> rx on hdd Adaptor gnd --> black gnd on power supply HDD gnd --> black gnd on power supply for 7200.10 drives use 9600 baud rate (otherwise output is gabled, this is an indication) for 7200.11 drives use 38400 baud rate and follow this guide! ENJOY!

Been going through everything here trying to figure out the right setup for what I have but so far unsuccessful! Before I describve what I'm doing, I have searched and looked all over the internet but found no relevant information. I have a USB to TTL adaptor I bought from someone on ebay. There is no brand name on it, all I know about it is that it has the prolific chipset, then has connectors for rx, tx, gnd, 3.3 & 5v ... I have tried using it but whenever I use hyperterminal or putty I get an error saying it could not connect to com3 - I tried in XP and on my windows 7 machine but no go. Seems to be non function - would this be the right assessment? I also tested with a loop back (only with rx/tx connected together) and did nto get a reply but was able to send the data (as per the read out from 232analyzer). I went to radioshack to see what they had onhand and found a usb to ttl cable for scanner radios - has the ftdi232bm chip on it, successfully installed in windows 7 (and in windows xp) and can get the loopback working no problem. I'm assuming the other cable is a ground. I cannot get to the f3 > prompt to do anything to the drive - and it is a good, working drive i'm testing on! In the main guide i didn';t see anything really mentioned about grounding, but in the other read me it says to ground everything. I tried just using the sata power connecter from my desktop to the drive, then the rx/tx from the usb adaptor and got nothing. I then attached the ground from the adaptor to the drive, got nothing. Finally I grounded the adaptor to one of the black ground cables coming from a power connector in the computer, also grounded the hdd to the same one - so everything that has a ground is connected to the black ground cable from the PS in my desktop. still nothing. Any ideas? Also, would it be prudent of me to attach the ground from the usb to ttl (the one that throws the could not connect to comx error in hyperterminal and putty)to the negative on a pair of batteries and send the + on the batteries to the 3.3 on the usb adaptor? Unfortunatly the item I got from ebay did not have instructions or anything, only the part. The radio shack scanner cable i'm using is definitely ttl (loop back works) and is model number 20-047 ANY help is greatly appreciated!!