Trying to be able to cross reference which part numbers during which time periods use specific preamps. Once enough of these are collected it may be possible to see the correlation of where you can get away with a different part number which may be half the price of a donor with the same part number. Also, since you can't read the preamp version when the heads are bad, it'd be nice to be able to make a more accurate guess at which preamp version it should be by comparison to similar ones.
I'm already saving hundreds of dollars a week from being able to cross match WD drives of different models. If we could figure out a system to more accurately cross match Seagates, I think we could save a lot of money on parts there too. Already I've managed to handle quite a few cases using different part number DM drives just by making a close match of the date and site (serial too if possible). But, it's largely just guesswork since we don't have enough raw data to make a good comparison yet.
If a half dozen of us all contribute our findings based on the cases/donor we've got handy, over time we should collect quite a list which can later be compiled and compared. I'd love to eventually be able to set an approximate date range of what preamp was used in a part number during what era. So we could later consolidate the list to be more like P/N: XXXXXX from Site:XX uses PA: XXXX from Dates: XXXXX to XXXXX then changes to XXXXX after date XXXXX.
It'll take several hundred to be submitted before we get there, but we've got to start somewhere. I created this forum largely to post my own research/findings in an organized way, and hopefully get feedback from others in the process. The more we know, the more money we all can make.
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