WD Marvell Boot ROM (COM Port)

[Jono]

Use the Toshiba adapter on the USB versions. I haven't tried it on SATA 2.5.

 

[Jared]

Fixing my first bricked PCB to restore an old donor right now and loving this new feature. I'm gonna try on a 2.5" drive after. Just got to figure out the pin configuration.

 

[Jared]

Ok, I've just confirmed that it also works on the 2.5" models. Same two center pins. Here's a photo of the connection:

View attachment WD-2.5-Boot-Rom.jpg

I'm quite surprised how quickly it reads/writes the ROM code. Much faster than Seagate boot ROM utility. Un-bricked two PCB's already today using it. This is great, now I don't have to be as careful when writing ROM code to PCB's that may or may not be compatible.

Thanks Ace Lab...again!

 

[pclab]

Yeah, this was a great development from ACE.

 

[Jared]

Yes it was. And to think, a couple months ago I was looking into buying a programmer so I could manually re-write the code to the ROMs of these bricked PCBs. Glad I waited.

 

[Jared]

I'm loving this feature. It's great when I just want to read the ROM but I don't want to spin up the drive. So far it's worked on every WD drive I've tried, even the bricked PCB's I've been putting back into use.

 

[pclab]

The image files are "dead". Need to repair them.