Unlocking a Seagate ST310014ACE Hard Drive - Step 3

I've completed the next step in my quest of unlocking a Seagate ST310014ACE hard drive and that is gathering of all the parts I need.  As you may recall from my Silly Project post, I have an old PII-108 RS-232 serial card which has the integrated circuit chips I plan to use in my Serial Programmer Circuit Design. This picture shows the GD75188 and GD75189A chips on that board:

I went to Radio Shack and picked up items 276-159, 276-1538 and 276-1539 today. Here's a picture of them:

For the connection to the ATX power supply, I'm planning to use the pass-thru part of a case fan connector. I think I can use my needle-nosed tweezers and pinch the pins so I can slide each wire out of the connector hood.  That will let me plug each one into the appropriate hole in the ATX connector.  The next picture shows that and an audio cable. It's the one that goes from a sound card to a CD or DVD drive for playing music CDs. I will cut the wire midway and that will give me two 4 pin connectors to plug into the Xbox's hard drive communication port.

Step 4 will be to de-solder the two IC chips from the old board and then build the circuit I've designed.  (Remember, it's based on cyd0g's original design and I've merely created an alternate version using different parts.) I'll let you know how that goes when I get there.

Xbox ST310014ACE Unlocker - Serial Programmer Circuit Design

My silly project continues. I call it that because of the extraordinary amount of time I'm spending on it just to unlock an Xbox Seagate ST310014ACE 10 gig hard drive.  This was one of about a dozen drives given to me which either had problems or were too small to be of practical use in a modern computer.  Well, for those who know me, I don't have any modern computers and this size would be quite nice for me.

During my search for a solution, I found the following information at Llamma.Com: "The Xbox uses a hard drive password locking mechanism, each password is unique, if you do not know the password you cannot even format a locked drive by normal means. The motherboard that hard drive came with knows the password but if the board is no longer available a hardware/software means of forcing the drive to unlock is necessary to make the drive useful again."

Later on that page is a link to Unlocking Tutorial Seagate ST310014ACE v0.1 by cyd0g which provides a diagram for building a serial programmer circuit to access the drive and instructions for chatting with the drive via Hyperterminal. I really, really want to try that but the main ingredient in cyd0g's recipe is a Max232 integrated circuit chip which I don't have and cannot obtain locally. Further research on my part seems to indicate that the MC 1488 and MC 1489 chips have similar line drivers and receivers respectively. They are functionally equivalent to the GD75188 and GD75189A chips which can be found on many old RS-232 (serial) cards and I happen to have more than one of those cards.

Here then is step two of my silly project in which I've laid out the circuit design that I think will do the same thing as cyd0g's original:

If you happen to be reading this and are actually interested in my design, be sure to right-click the image and select "Save Picture As..." so you can have a copy for later reference. Also, anyone who wishes to host this image on their site may do so as long as it is in unaltered form. Be sure to include a reference link to cyd0g's tutorial because it has the instructions for how to use the serial programmer circuit.

Additionally, do note that I've not built and tested it yet but will be doing so in the future.

EDIT - 10/08/2011 @ 01:47 am.

I've now built and tested the circut, see this post. And the one after it when I get around to writing it.

Silly Project

I'm not ready to post the details of my project, but I've spent about 14 to 16 hours over the past couple of days doing research for it. I've embedded a few links you can browse if you are really bored (or into techie things). The project calls for a Max232 integrated circuit chip. I don't have one of those and the local Radio Shack doesn't carry them. However, I dug way deep into my old parts collection and found this:

(I googled the above picture. I'll take one of my own card when I am ready to post the complete details of my project.)

Anyhow, this card happens to have a GD75188 and a GD75189A on it. If I'm understanding this stuff right, where I need to use pins 7 & 10 of the Max232 chip, I can use pins 2 & 3 of the GD75188 for my line driver and where it needs pins 8 & 9 of the Max232, I can use pins 1 & 3 of the GD75189A for my line receiver. I will have to supply +12 volt and -12 volt to the '88 chip rather than only the +5 volt the Max232 uses. No big deal there because I'm planning to use an old computer power supply to get my juice. I've already tested the PSU by shorting the PS_ON pin to ground so I can turn it on without having to plug it into a motherboard.

Do keep in mind that the power supply should not be run this way unless you have a load on it.  Meaning a device that is using some of the power it is producing. I connected a hard drive (which has 1.23 meg in bad sectors and which I don't trust for data).

I'll make a new blog entry when I get more accomplished or finish building the circuitry.

Lady in Gold

Alice and I started our game about 5:10 am (her time) which is a little after 9 in the evening on the previous day for me. I'd been thinking about what to stick in one of the open sockets in my weapon and decided a perfect Amethyst would be good because it would add +150 to my attack rating. This increases the chance that I will hit what I'm swinging at.

We strolled thru the Stoney Field, then the Underground Passage and into the Dark Woods. Here we have found the Tree of Inifuss which gave us the Scroll of Inifuss. Akara translated the gibberish written on it and it's the secret code to the Cairn Stones.

So, back to the Stoney Field where we killed Rakanishu and his Minions.

I tagged the Stones in the order listed on the scroll and a red portal opened leading to Tristram.

We fought the monsters around the perimeter first and then tackled Griswold.

We found Deckard Cain sitting in a cage suspended from a tall post. He was happy to see us. Alice lowered the cage and told him he should get to the Rogue Camp right away. Cain lost no time complying with her command.

I chatted with Charsi and it turns out she has lost her Horadric Malus again. In this next picture we have just killed The Smith who is guarding it. I have other pictures before he died, but if you are following our adventures you've already seen what he looks like when we killed him in normal difficulty. I liked this picture because it shows his Great Maul flying up in the air.

When we got to the Jail Level 1, Alice realized she had swapped out her Stealth Armor for an empty 3 socket Breast Plate. We jumped back to town and she made Stealth again in a Field Plate. She is now mostly golden wearing this armor. (I've cropped the picture so you can see her better.)

I went to bed in the wee hours of the morning and just got up a little while ago. I'm heading off to our secret room on TC now to chat with Alice before I start my real life chores.

Video Card Repair

Yay! I revived another dead computer part. This time it's a video card which would overheat and quit working because the fan didn't spin. Here's a picture of how the card looked originally. (I googled it since I didn't take a picture before I started my repair.)

I popped off the dead fan / heatsink and then found a CPU heatsink from an antique computer and a small fan from my parts box. I'm not sure what it was for originally but prolly a CPU cooler fan. I smeared on some high density, polysynthetic silver thermal compound and smooshed the heatsink down tight against the video GPU. To make the new combination stay on the card, I had previously drilled tiny holes thru the new fan housing and heatsink to line up with two of the holes in the card. You can see the silver top of the tiny bolt I used just to the right and down from the black screw. The other bolt is opposite and you can't see it in this picture.

Next is a picture of the back side of the card. I used a couple of rubber washers so the metal of the washers and nuts can't touch the card and cause an electronic short.

I then put the card into a computer and let it run continuously for 24 hours and it did not overheat. Next I wanted to identify what kind of card I had. The numbers I had to work with were "20001852" and "10004499 Rev B". By googling I found that it was most likely a VisionTek GeForce4 Ti4600 with 128 meg of DDR VRAM. More googling with this better information and I found this review at HotHardware.Com. I then googled for drivers in case I need them and MPCDrivers.Com has those available.

So, now I have another decent dual port video card I can use. :)

Robot Unicorn Attack

Ok. So Fairy Girl posted a link for Robot Unicorn Attack and I got a little bit addicted to it and played for about an hour. Here's the best I've done so far:

There is the same game play but with slightly different graphics and way different music called Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal.

Blood Raven - Nightmare

Now that we are playing in nightmare difficulty, I wanted to upgrade my weapon. You may recall I've been using a gemmed flail into which I'd put a Tal rune (+75 poison), a regular Skull (3% life steal, 2% mana steal), and a regular Topaz (1-22 lightning). This was the best I could make at the time, but it's woefully inadequate for the increased difficulty of the monsters we are facing now.

I'd been saving the normal grade War Scepter I'd found a week or so ago and I gave it to PackMule who took it to Larzuk to have holes punched in it. I was surprised and quite happy it got five, count them, five sockets. While I knew that the War Scepter could have that many sockets and that Larzuk gives the maximum an item can have, I was under the impression that it was capped at three holes in normal difficulty.

I've chosen the War Scepter for two reasons. First it is mace class and has the +50% damage to undead because of its class and second, it has a [-10] fast attack speed for a sorceress. By itself with no other attack speed modifiers, I can deliver 1.56 attacks per second. Add in the 20% increased attack speed (IAS) from my Sander's gloves and I'm up to 1.78 attacks per second. I decided to drop in a Shael Rune to get my IAS up to 40%. This just crosses the 39% IAS threshold to get me up to 2.08 attacks per second.

I also put in a perfect Emerald to add +100 poison damage and an Amn rune for 7% life steal per hit. I've left the other two sockets open while I decide what I want to put into them. With my Enchant, it currently delivers 395 to 508 damage.

During our first trip out in nightmare, I had found a three socket Razor Bow and set it back to for my Rogue sidekick to use.

I added a Nef rune for its knockback, then a perfect Emerald for poison and a perfect Sapphire for cold damage. With my Enchant, that puts her damage at 330 to 437.

Alice joined the game about 5:30 am her time and we went to visit Blood Raven. By the time we killed her, I had drank 4 super healing potions.

We went on into the Crypt and the Mausoleum and then back to camp where we had a nice chat for about an hour before I needed to go to bed.

Destruction's End

We had a very eventful game night. I had been playing PackMule for about half an hour when Alice joined the game. He'd cleared about 80% of the Ancient's Way since that's the highest level area he could get too. This provides the best experience points.

I exited PackMule and brought my me character into the game. Alice suggested going to the River of Flame, so we cleared it, then the Chaos Sanctuary and killed Diablo. After that, she said she was thinking we should do a suicide mission by visiting the Ancient Barbarians. I agreed we should go, but that I bet we would do just fine.

I put all my life charms and the one which adds lightning damage into my backpack and also allocated my unused stat points to get my life up to 563. In this picture I'm using Static Field against Talic.

With Talic out of the way, I focused on Madawc while Alice fought with Korlic.

In this next shot, I had switched over to zapping Korlic. Both barbarians are nearly finished at this point.

And now the Ancient's are all back in place as golden statues. We have been granted entry to the interior of Mount Arreat, wherein lies the Worldstone.

Alice opens the gate so we can continue our adventure.

We fought our way thru the three levels of the Worldstone Keep and now we are ready to enter the Throne of Destruction.

Baal released wave after wave of nasty monsters when we arrived in his area. Here is Achmel the Cursed.

And Bartuc the Bloody.

Now Ventar the Unholy.

And finally, Lister the Tormentor. Lister was a bit more difficult than the others and I had to run out leading them thru the maze in order to spread them out. One on one they are no match for us, but in a group they can be deadly.

With all of Baal's minions disposed of, we are ready to follow him into the Worldstone Chamber.

When we got into his chamber, I went directly after Baal. I noticed Alice wasn't right along side, but I assumed that she was having a moment of lag and would be there soon. I killed Baal before she got caught up with me.

Along comes Tyrael to congratulate us on our fine work of ridding the world of evil. He opens a new portal for us.

Thus ends our adventures in normal difficulty. We have been granted the title of Slayer and Alice would have seen a screen like this with her name.

I created a new game in Nightmare difficulty and we played just a little while there since Alice has plans for the day. Here's a picture of us in the Rogue Camp. It doesn't look any different in nightmare than normal. lol

We battled a few monsters in the Blood Moor and the difference is that there are boss monsters with minions which aren't present in this area in normal. We popped into the Den of Evil and cleared it to get our reward from Akara. Then Alice left to have breakfast and get ready for her day.

Happy birthday to Maeva!

Alternate Clones

I started the game last night about 7:10 pm, 50 minutes before Alice said she might be able to play. I created the game with my barbarian PackMule character so I could play while I waited for her and have Anya's portal in case Alice wanted to visit Pindleskin. PackMule has made it to the Arreat Summit atop the mountain, but has not fought the ancients yet since he still wants better gear.

I didn't know where Alice might want to explore so I didn't take him to any area in Act 5 that way all monsters would be intact when she arrived. He went to the River of Flame waypoint and ventured east into the Chaos Sanctuary and cleared the area. He released the monsters from each of the three live seals but did not open the last two empty ones to release Diablo.

Afterwards I took him into the Rogue Camp and here is a group picture of him in the middle and my alternate clones as we stand in the rain.

The term "alternate clones" is one coined by Alice a few days ago. When we were playing she asked if my other characters were twins or clones. I said something like: If they are clones then their DNA has been altered a bit since they don't look anything like me." (Remember, the "me" character is a sorceress.) That seemed to tickle her and she started calling them my alternate clones.

So, let me introduce them to you. In this next picture you can see Jessie_Starter, the Assassin. I created her first to start the games for us when we were in Act 1. This lets us re-run boss monsters and especially the Countess with improved odds of good things dropping.

Starter is also used to hold extra things we might need or want later in the game or as we find some new items. For instance, at one point I had all of my resistences maxed but found the Sander's Taboo Heavy Gloves. With their +20% increased attack speed and +40 to life, I chose them over the gloves I had at the time. This then dropped one of my resistences too low so I swapped with some items Starter was holding to compensate.

Now that we are in Act 5 and I have accumulated more stuff, I have organized them so each holds a more generalized group of things. Starter now holds my extra jewelry which consists mostly of +resistence amulets and rings, and she has the extra runes and various gems. This lets me keep all the chips and flaweds and cube them up to better grades without having to worry about stash space.

This next picture is PackmuleToo, a Paladin. I created him when I needed more space. He now holds mostly charms and full rejuvination potions.

As we started getting better clothing items to wear, I wanted to save the old stuff for each of these characters to use in case I play them through normal difficulty and then they can be in our game when we start nightmare. This next character is Jessies_Clothes, a necromancer. He now holds just the hats, armors, belts, gloves and boots.

I specifically chose to make each mule character a different class so I would get experience playing other characters. (I've only seriously played a barbarian and a sorceress.)

Oh, and for those of you not familar with the game, another reason to have all of them in while we play is that it makes the experience gained per monster kill higher and increases the odds of good things dropping.

Well, Alice didn't get into the game so that means she was tired and needed her rest. She has to go to school this morning. (Actually, she's already there since she is 8 hours ahead of me.)

Bloated Capacitors

This isn't exactly a Diablo game post except that it relates to one of the computers I'm using for a mule character. A couple of months ago I got 4 new (to me) Dell computers with 2.8ghz CPUs. While in the game, one of them would lockup with a random exception error. I did some research and then looked inside. Turns out one of the capacitors suffers from the Capacitor plague.

This picture is kinda fuzzy cause my camera isn't good at close up, but it's good enough to see the bulging top.

On the side of the capacitor it shows 6.3v 1500μF. (The μF stands for microfarad, tho that's not important to know.) I dug thru my old parts box and found an AOpen motherboard which was for a 400mhz, Slot 1 CPU and since it's way too slow to be of much practical use, I decided I could use its capacitors to fix the Dell boards. It has 14 caps with matching specs. :)

I de-soldered the bad cap, then a good cap, and then re-soldered the good cap onto the Dell motherboard. I've run the Diablo game on it for about 36 hours total with one of the sessions being about 18 hours and no lockups or any other problems. One other of the Dells has a slight bulge on that cap and the other two look just fine. I'm guessing that shows which were used more and which less. I'm going to swap out the capacitors on all of them as preventive maintenance. This picture is the new cap on the Dell board.

Well, this got me to thinking about the random problems I was having with my work computer. YouTube videos would not play on my main 21" monitor, but if I moved them over to the little 17" secondary monitor they would play fine. This seemed odd to me since the main screen is hooked up to an AGP GeForce MX 440 video card with 128 meg of ram and the secondary is using a PCI 4 meg S3 Virge card. As time went on, I was having more and more goofy video glitches like scrolling a web page would just freeze up. I could minimize and maximize it from the task bar and it would be ok again. For a short or long while.

Anyhow, I pulled out the GeForce card and I found that 7 of the 9 capacitors were bloated. These pictures show just the 7 in the group near the back of the card. You can see the 5 bad ones on the left and back. The other two are what they should look like.

The last two pictures are a bit better since I used a big magnifying glass in front of the camera lens. I could prolly get a better one of the top view, but it's good enough for this blog which very few peeps read.

And in case you are wondering, no, I did not fix this card but I did set it aside as a possible future project if I can find the caps it needs. For the quick fix, I dropped in a GeForce FX 5500 dual port card with 256 meg of ram.