sci.electronics.repair - 25 new messages in 6 topics - digest

sci.electronics.repair
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair?hl=en

sci.electronics.repair@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* Panasonic SA-HT900 ... - 3 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/14a7a8731143d537?hl=en
* LATEST HOT PICS &VIDEOS - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/228ec632894efff1?hl=en
* Car OBC - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/e84167d59ce27549?hl=en
* Specialised spring - make or mend? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/381236ff95a702b9?hl=en
* Large IDE drives not compatable with old systems - 18 messages, 7 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/739861bba23f7546?hl=en
* You Want To Know About Your Future? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/f7c0af3d98526a6d?hl=en

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Panasonic SA-HT900 ...
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/14a7a8731143d537?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 3 ==
Date: Wed, Nov 3 2010 7:09 pm
From: "Arfa Daily"

"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2010.11.03.17.37.50@lmao.lol.lol...
> On Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:19:14 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:
>
>> Has anybody got a proper paper service manual for this home cinema unit,
>> or access to a better Panasonic on-line copy for it, or a similar model
>> for their part of the world, than I have got here in the UK ? The tray
>> timing is completely screwed on the one I have on the bench. It looks
>> like someone has been 'at it' before me. The copy of the manual on the
>> UK Panasonic service website, is about two points to the left of useless
>> in terms of the reassembly / timing procedures. It is not a zoomable pdf
>> file, but one of those dreadful html things, where the photos and
>> diagrams are all gifs with a resolution of about 20 x 10 ! They appear
>> on the screen the size of a postage stamp - literally ... They are
>> totally unreadable, and no use at all. It's not as if this is a cheapo
>> unit. How on earth do they expect people to be able to fix the stuff,
>> when this is the sort of level of support that they're providing to
>> their service network ?
>>
>> Anyways, ranting aside, I just need to get a look at the tray
>> re-assembly diagrams and any notes, especially in regard of relative
>> positionings, and starting points for the cam gear, and the tray drive
>> gear that runs off it.
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> Arfa
>
> Don't have any info. But having worked on a similar 5 disc rotary changer
> unit I wanted to wish you good luck if you couldn't find suitable
> technical literature.
>
>

Think I've got what I need now, Meat - see my other reply in the thread.
Thanks for your luck wishes !

Arfa

== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 5:07 am
From: "Arfa Daily"

Well, as it turned out, with the help of the info that Trev sent me, it was
actually staggeringly simple to realign. Of course, nothing's that
straightforward, is it ? After the tray was refitted and moving correctly
when hand cranked from underneath via the little gear that they kindly give
you to do just this, I put it back on power. The laser homed, the display
said "TRAY INIT", and that's as far as it went, before spitting the tray
out, coming to a stop, and the display changing to "TRAY OPEN". Nothing then
worked at all, until it was powered back off. Looking at the area of the
main PCB where the SMPS section is, there were several areas that were quite
badly scorched, and numerous small(ish) electrolytics were located in these
areas. A quick run over them with an ESR meter revealed four of them to be
virtually open, so I figured that we may have dirty rails here, that were
causing the micro to screw up during initialisation of the mechanics. Once
the board was out, it was easy to see why it was discoloured. Panasonic, in
a breathtakingly stupid bit of design work, have sited a whole bunch of sm
regulator devices on the underside of this SRBP board, using the copper as a
heatsink as well as an anchoring point. And then sited all the device
decoupling caps immediately above. I mean, who designs this stuff in the
first place, and then, what on earth is their manager thinking of, when he /
she signs it off as an approved design ?

Anyway, I replaced the caps and reassembled. Result ? Nothing, of course.
Exactly the same ... :-/

It then occurred to me that at no time had I ever seen the carousel
rotating, so I removed the tray again - confident now that I could put it
back in a flash - to have a look underneath at the drive motor and sensors.
This little bit of circuitry is connected back to the main PCB underneath
the deck, via a white flexiprint - the type with the blue strengtheners at
either end. When I looked a bit closer, at the board end, it was very
sharply bent at the inner edge of the strengthener. A quick ohms check
revealed that several of the ribbons were fractured at this point of bend. I
had a suitable length replacement for it in the junkbox, but it still didn't
quite end there. The original was one of those rather more rare types, where
the exposed connection 'fingers' at either end, were on opposite sides of
the ribbon, rather than both on the same side, as is more common, and was
the way my proposed replacement was. Fortunately, it was long enough to be
able to cut off the fingers at one end, and then scrape back on the opposite
side to reveal a new set. The strengthener was then glued back to the
ribbon, and the whole shebang refitted.

This time, everything cycled correctly at power up, and each of the five
disc positions was checked for the presence of a disc, before it all came to
rest showing "NO DISC" in the display. It then opened ok, closed ok, and
played a disc as it should.

Nice to get to the bottom of one that looked like it might be a non starter
at first :-)

Arfa

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:53 pm
From: "Trevor Wilson"

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:5mxAo.7232$JW.3216@newsfe25.ams2...
>
> Well, as it turned out, with the help of the info that Trev sent me, it
> was actually staggeringly simple to realign. Of course, nothing's that
> straightforward, is it ? After the tray was refitted and moving correctly
> when hand cranked from underneath via the little gear that they kindly
> give you to do just this, I put it back on power. The laser homed, the
> display said "TRAY INIT", and that's as far as it went, before spitting
> the tray out, coming to a stop, and the display changing to "TRAY OPEN".
> Nothing then worked at all, until it was powered back off. Looking at the
> area of the main PCB where the SMPS section is, there were several areas
> that were quite badly scorched, and numerous small(ish) electrolytics were
> located in these areas. A quick run over them with an ESR meter revealed
> four of them to be virtually open,

**Good one Arfa. Your post reminded me of a job that came in a couple of
weeks ago. The client had left the item with a competitor, who made her pay
for a new output IC and a service manual (all at full retail, of course).
The company went belly-up before they could complete the repair, so they
handed the item back to my client. She brought it 'round and I did a few
tests on it. Everything pointed to a new output IC (why order a service
manual?), so I replaced it. No change. 7 small electros later and the thing
was performing nicely. Damned things. I don't even bother testing them
anymore. At 13c each, I just replace them.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

==============================================================================
TOPIC: LATEST HOT PICS &VIDEOS
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/228ec632894efff1?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:23 am
From: SRAVANTHI LOVE

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Car OBC
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/e84167d59ce27549?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:41 am
From: "Dave Plowman (News)"

Anyone recommend a better newsgroup to try? I realise it's more a design
than repair thing.

--
*Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Specialised spring - make or mend?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/381236ff95a702b9?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 5:31 am
From: "N_Cook"

Back in working order , how long will my spring last?. About 2mm of slack ,
for wear or spring give, before the actuating spigot bottoms out in the slot
of the metal slide carrier

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Large IDE drives not compatable with old systems
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/t/739861bba23f7546?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 9:09 am
From: "Gareth Magennis"

Hi,

I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital audio
multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland Service) is
that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format correctly.

It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see 4
FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the drive.
If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes about 8
hours, and again fails right at the end. I've tried all jumper combinations
re: Master/slave etc.

I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
drive. (WD1600AAJB)

So is there perhaps a way to fool the 2480 into thinking this is an 80G
drive?

I actually had a similar problem with my Sony Vaio laptop when I tried to
upgrade the 40G drive - the Vaio didn't recognise the large drive properly
and DMA (I think) was not turned on, resulting in extremely slow disk
access. After posting on usenet someone pointed me to an alternative
chipset driver that made the Vaio think it had a SCSI/Raid controller and
the large IDE hard drive then worked perfectly!?!

What is this thing with too large hard drives? Is there any likelyhood of
getting this drive to format?

Sorry for the long post.

Gareth.

== 2 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 9:42 am
From: "Gareth Magennis"

Ah, the noisy drive that does format is a 40GB Western Digital WD400, not a
Maxtor.

Could I use this to somehow "clone" the new drive?

Cheers,

Gareth.

== 3 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 10:03 am
From: D Yuniskis

Gareth Magennis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital audio
> multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland Service) is
> that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format correctly.
>
> It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
> fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see 4
> FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the drive.
> If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes about 8
> hours, and again fails right at the end. I've tried all jumper combinations
> re: Master/slave etc.
>
> I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
> and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
> drive. (WD1600AAJB)
>
> So is there perhaps a way to fool the 2480 into thinking this is an 80G
> drive?
>
> I actually had a similar problem with my Sony Vaio laptop when I tried to
> upgrade the 40G drive - the Vaio didn't recognise the large drive properly
> and DMA (I think) was not turned on, resulting in extremely slow disk
> access. After posting on usenet someone pointed me to an alternative
> chipset driver that made the Vaio think it had a SCSI/Raid controller and
> the large IDE hard drive then worked perfectly!?!
>
> What is this thing with too large hard drives? Is there any likelyhood of
> getting this drive to format?

Have you tried putting the drive into a PC and building/formatting
your four 10G partitions *there*? IIRC, FAT32 will support up to
~30G so you could try four 30G partitions and losing the remaining
40G on the drive (which should still be better than the original
device *ever* had!).

Larger disks use LBA addressing and can convert the old C/H/S addresses
to this form -- but, only to the extent supported by the CHS scheme!
(thank the morons who saved a few *bits* on these disks (going back to
floppy land) with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, etc. (gee, aren't disks BIGGER
than "a few bits"??) and gave us all of these compatibility issues...

== 4 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 10:27 am
From: WangoTango

In article <EbmdnbK3kMxTR0_RnZ2dnUVZ7qmdnZ2d@bt.com>,
sound.service@btconnect.com says...
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital audio
> multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland Service) is
> that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format correctly.
>
> It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
> fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see 4
> FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the drive.
> If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes about 8
> hours, and again fails right at the end. I've tried all jumper combinations
> re: Master/slave etc.
>
> I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
> and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
> drive. (WD1600AAJB)
>
> So is there perhaps a way to fool the 2480 into thinking this is an 80G
> drive?
>
> I actually had a similar problem with my Sony Vaio laptop when I tried to
> upgrade the 40G drive - the Vaio didn't recognise the large drive properly
> and DMA (I think) was not turned on, resulting in extremely slow disk
> access. After posting on usenet someone pointed me to an alternative
> chipset driver that made the Vaio think it had a SCSI/Raid controller and
> the large IDE hard drive then worked perfectly!?!
>
> What is this thing with too large hard drives? Is there any likelyhood of
> getting this drive to format?
>
>
> Sorry for the long post.
>
> Gareth.

I just used a CF adapter and a 40G CF card to repair an old system that
we have to use with some ancient test equipment.
Not only does it work, it runs FAST.
They are cheap to boot.

== 5 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 11:04 am
From: Meat Plow

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:

> Larger disks use LBA addressing

So do smaller disks, LOL!

LBA is a particularly simple linear addressing scheme; blocks are located
by an integer index, with the first block being LBA 0, the second LBA 1,
and so on.

IDE standard included 22-bit LBA as an option, which was further extended
to 28-bit with the release of ATA-1 (1994) and to 48-bit with the release
of ATA-6 (2003). Most hard drives released after 1996 implement Logical
block addressing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

== 6 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 11:06 am
From: Meat Plow

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:42:18 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:

> Ah, the noisy drive that does format is a 40GB Western Digital WD400,
> not a Maxtor.
>
> Could I use this to somehow "clone" the new drive?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Gareth.

Go to google.com and search for - free hd cloning software.

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

== 7 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 12:11 pm
From: D Yuniskis

Meat Plow wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:
>
>> Larger disks use LBA addressing
>
> So do smaller disks, LOL!

Only *some* smaller disks. Older (the OP was talking about "old
systems" -- I guess I take that *literally*) drives expected
the CHS values to conform to the *physical* geometry of the
drive (i.e., before ZDR, etc.). Older INT13 limits trapped
you at ~500MB (I have a selection of ~300MB drives on hand for
just such machines).

Early IDE implementations required the INIT message to provide
the *actual* physical geometry implementation to the drive's
controller. Getting this wrong resulted in a scrambled disk.
(I was "lucky"? enough to be a victim of one of the first IDE
machines ~1986 vintage when the rest of the world was still ST506).

As processing power IN THE DRIVE became affordable, it was possible
for the drive to map arbitrary "virtual" geometries into their
own physical geometry. This allowed you to use any "drive type"
that your BIOS would support -- so long as you never exceeded the
physical capacity of the device. I've modified the ROMs in my
Compaq Portable III and Portable 386 to create bogus drive types
to allow 300M drives to be used in these boxes (this is tricky as
you have to do so without invalidating the ROMs checksum, etc.)
instead of the ~100MB limit imposed by the original drive type
selection.

"Type 47" eventually became synonymous with "user defined geometry"
as BIOS's began to allow these extra parameters to be stored in
"CMOS" (once the 50 byte limitation of the original MC146818 was
ignored). This allowed you to fabricate an arbitrary geometry
for your drive without concern for the "claimed" physical geometry
(since ZDR has made this meaningless) as long as your geometry
fit "within" the drive's capacity.

Nowadays, the drive's capacity is queried (won't work with antique
drives!) and automagically accommodated.

Of course, that's at the lowest level in the drive interface "stack".
You still have to deal with partitions, slices and the individual
requirements of the file systems hosted *on* that drive -- any of
which can also constrain the usable space.

Many OS's still have throwbacks to physical device geometries for
hysterical raisins. E.g., you can't boot a Solaris systems (pre 10?)
if the startup code isn't within the first 2G of the boot partition;
the same is true of many MS OS's (DOS 3.3, IIRC, had a 32M! limit).

Any of these things can be responsible for upsetting the OP's
device. I stand by my initial comment: format the drive on a
PC and then install it in the device. If you are tech savvy,
*wipe* the drive first; then let the device *try* to format it;
then examine the MBR and partition table to see if everything
is *almost* right (it could be that the "problem" lies in writing
the partition table sanely); then, resort to the PC approach

(I've used this sort of tactic to upsize drives in NAS boxes, etc.
beyond "factory supported limits")

> LBA is a particularly simple linear addressing scheme; blocks are located
> by an integer index, with the first block being LBA 0, the second LBA 1,
> and so on.
>
> IDE standard included 22-bit LBA as an option, which was further extended
> to 28-bit with the release of ATA-1 (1994) and to 48-bit with the release
> of ATA-6 (2003). Most hard drives released after 1996 implement Logical
> block addressing.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing
>
>

== 8 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:42 pm
From: "Gareth Magennis"

"D Yuniskis" <not.going.to.be@seen.com> wrote in message
news:iav04e$jak$1@speranza.aioe.org...
> Meat Plow wrote:
>> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:
>>
>>> Larger disks use LBA addressing
>>
>> So do smaller disks, LOL!
>
> Only *some* smaller disks. Older (the OP was talking about "old
> systems" -- I guess I take that *literally*) drives expected
> the CHS values to conform to the *physical* geometry of the
> drive (i.e., before ZDR, etc.). Older INT13 limits trapped
> you at ~500MB (I have a selection of ~300MB drives on hand for
> just such machines).
>
> Early IDE implementations required the INIT message to provide
> the *actual* physical geometry implementation to the drive's
> controller. Getting this wrong resulted in a scrambled disk.
> (I was "lucky"? enough to be a victim of one of the first IDE
> machines ~1986 vintage when the rest of the world was still ST506).
>
> As processing power IN THE DRIVE became affordable, it was possible
> for the drive to map arbitrary "virtual" geometries into their
> own physical geometry. This allowed you to use any "drive type"
> that your BIOS would support -- so long as you never exceeded the
> physical capacity of the device. I've modified the ROMs in my
> Compaq Portable III and Portable 386 to create bogus drive types
> to allow 300M drives to be used in these boxes (this is tricky as
> you have to do so without invalidating the ROMs checksum, etc.)
> instead of the ~100MB limit imposed by the original drive type
> selection.
>
> "Type 47" eventually became synonymous with "user defined geometry"
> as BIOS's began to allow these extra parameters to be stored in
> "CMOS" (once the 50 byte limitation of the original MC146818 was
> ignored). This allowed you to fabricate an arbitrary geometry
> for your drive without concern for the "claimed" physical geometry
> (since ZDR has made this meaningless) as long as your geometry
> fit "within" the drive's capacity.
>
> Nowadays, the drive's capacity is queried (won't work with antique
> drives!) and automagically accommodated.
>
> Of course, that's at the lowest level in the drive interface "stack".
> You still have to deal with partitions, slices and the individual
> requirements of the file systems hosted *on* that drive -- any of
> which can also constrain the usable space.
>
> Many OS's still have throwbacks to physical device geometries for
> hysterical raisins. E.g., you can't boot a Solaris systems (pre 10?)
> if the startup code isn't within the first 2G of the boot partition;
> the same is true of many MS OS's (DOS 3.3, IIRC, had a 32M! limit).
>
> Any of these things can be responsible for upsetting the OP's
> device. I stand by my initial comment: format the drive on a
> PC and then install it in the device. If you are tech savvy,
> *wipe* the drive first; then let the device *try* to format it;
> then examine the MBR and partition table to see if everything
> is *almost* right (it could be that the "problem" lies in writing
> the partition table sanely); then, resort to the PC approach
>
> (I've used this sort of tactic to upsize drives in NAS boxes, etc.
> beyond "factory supported limits")
>
>> LBA is a particularly simple linear addressing scheme; blocks are located
>> by an integer index, with the first block being LBA 0, the second LBA 1,
>> and so on.
>>
>> IDE standard included 22-bit LBA as an option, which was further extended
>> to 28-bit with the release of ATA-1 (1994) and to 48-bit with the release
>> of ATA-6 (2003). Most hard drives released after 1996 implement Logical
>> block addressing.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing
>>

Interesting stuff guys. Thanks.

In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot from
it.
I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard Flash,
with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.

Does this make things any easier?
Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable proposition?

Cheers,

Gareth.

== 9 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:45 pm
From: "Michael A. Terrell"

Gareth Magennis wrote:
>
> "D Yuniskis" <not.going.to.be@seen.com> wrote in message
> news:iav04e$jak$1@speranza.aioe.org...
> > Meat Plow wrote:
> >> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:
> >>
> >>> Larger disks use LBA addressing
> >>
> >> So do smaller disks, LOL!
> >
> > Only *some* smaller disks. Older (the OP was talking about "old
> > systems" -- I guess I take that *literally*) drives expected
> > the CHS values to conform to the *physical* geometry of the
> > drive (i.e., before ZDR, etc.). Older INT13 limits trapped
> > you at ~500MB (I have a selection of ~300MB drives on hand for
> > just such machines).
> >
> > Early IDE implementations required the INIT message to provide
> > the *actual* physical geometry implementation to the drive's
> > controller. Getting this wrong resulted in a scrambled disk.
> > (I was "lucky"? enough to be a victim of one of the first IDE
> > machines ~1986 vintage when the rest of the world was still ST506).
> >
> > As processing power IN THE DRIVE became affordable, it was possible
> > for the drive to map arbitrary "virtual" geometries into their
> > own physical geometry. This allowed you to use any "drive type"
> > that your BIOS would support -- so long as you never exceeded the
> > physical capacity of the device. I've modified the ROMs in my
> > Compaq Portable III and Portable 386 to create bogus drive types
> > to allow 300M drives to be used in these boxes (this is tricky as
> > you have to do so without invalidating the ROMs checksum, etc.)
> > instead of the ~100MB limit imposed by the original drive type
> > selection.
> >
> > "Type 47" eventually became synonymous with "user defined geometry"
> > as BIOS's began to allow these extra parameters to be stored in
> > "CMOS" (once the 50 byte limitation of the original MC146818 was
> > ignored). This allowed you to fabricate an arbitrary geometry
> > for your drive without concern for the "claimed" physical geometry
> > (since ZDR has made this meaningless) as long as your geometry
> > fit "within" the drive's capacity.
> >
> > Nowadays, the drive's capacity is queried (won't work with antique
> > drives!) and automagically accommodated.
> >
> > Of course, that's at the lowest level in the drive interface "stack".
> > You still have to deal with partitions, slices and the individual
> > requirements of the file systems hosted *on* that drive -- any of
> > which can also constrain the usable space.
> >
> > Many OS's still have throwbacks to physical device geometries for
> > hysterical raisins. E.g., you can't boot a Solaris systems (pre 10?)
> > if the startup code isn't within the first 2G of the boot partition;
> > the same is true of many MS OS's (DOS 3.3, IIRC, had a 32M! limit).
> >
> > Any of these things can be responsible for upsetting the OP's
> > device. I stand by my initial comment: format the drive on a
> > PC and then install it in the device. If you are tech savvy,
> > *wipe* the drive first; then let the device *try* to format it;
> > then examine the MBR and partition table to see if everything
> > is *almost* right (it could be that the "problem" lies in writing
> > the partition table sanely); then, resort to the PC approach
> >
> > (I've used this sort of tactic to upsize drives in NAS boxes, etc.
> > beyond "factory supported limits")
> >
> >> LBA is a particularly simple linear addressing scheme; blocks are located
> >> by an integer index, with the first block being LBA 0, the second LBA 1,
> >> and so on.
> >>
> >> IDE standard included 22-bit LBA as an option, which was further extended
> >> to 28-bit with the release of ATA-1 (1994) and to 48-bit with the release
> >> of ATA-6 (2003). Most hard drives released after 1996 implement Logical
> >> block addressing.
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing
> >>
>
> Interesting stuff guys. Thanks.
>
> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot from
> it.
> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard Flash,
> with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.

It depends on the BIOS of the computer. That sets the upper limit.

> Does this make things any easier?
> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable proposition?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Gareth.
>
>

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.

== 10 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 2:56 pm
From: Meat Plow

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:42:55 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:

> Interesting stuff guys. Thanks.
>
>
> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot
> from it.
> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard
> Flash, with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.
>
> Does this make things any easier?
> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable
> proposition?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Gareth.

It is viable. Would need to be done in a PC, bit for Bit copy. But I'm
not sure if you need to clone it without me knowing the file system. I
snuck in here late, just what is the equipment. I've spent a couple
decades with digital recorders from Fostex, Otari and DVR recorders from
SA, Samsung and Cisco. The firmware embedded OS isn't a problem but I'd
like to do a little research on what a 2840 is.

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

== 11 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:05 pm
From: Franc Zabkar

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis
<not.going.to.be@seen.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>Have you tried putting the drive into a PC and building/formatting
>your four 10G partitions *there*? IIRC, FAT32 will support up to
>~30G ...

FAT32 can support drives much larger than that. For example, I'm
running a 120GB drive on a Win98SE box with a FAT32 file system. You
may be thinking of Windows XP's artificial 32GB limit.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

== 12 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:05 pm
From: "Gareth Magennis"

"Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2010.11.04.21.55.31@lmao.lol.lol...
> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:42:55 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:
>
>
>> Interesting stuff guys. Thanks.
>>
>>
>> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot
>> from it.
>> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard
>> Flash, with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.
>>
>> Does this make things any easier?
>> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable
>> proposition?
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>
>> Gareth.
>
>
> It is viable. Would need to be done in a PC, bit for Bit copy. But I'm
> not sure if you need to clone it without me knowing the file system. I
> snuck in here late, just what is the equipment. I've spent a couple
> decades with digital recorders from Fostex, Otari and DVR recorders from
> SA, Samsung and Cisco. The firmware embedded OS isn't a problem but I'd
> like to do a little research on what a 2840 is.
>
>
>

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=339

Its kinda old in technology terms, but not that old really.

Cheers,

Gareth.

== 13 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:09 pm
From: Franc Zabkar

On Thu, 4 Nov 2010 16:09:45 -0000, "Gareth Magennis"
<sound.service@btconnect.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital audio
>multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland Service) is
>that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format correctly.
>
>It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
>fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see 4
>FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the drive.
>If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes about 8
>hours, and again fails right at the end. I've tried all jumper combinations
>re: Master/slave etc.
>
>I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
>and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
>drive. (WD1600AAJB)
>
>So is there perhaps a way to fool the 2480 into thinking this is an 80G
>drive?

Perhaps the Roland recorder becomes confused with drives that are
larger than the 28-bit LBA limit, ie 128GiB or 137GB?

If so, then use HDAT2 to truncate the drive by creating a HPA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area
http://www.hdat2.com/
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

== 14 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:18 pm
From: D Yuniskis

Gareth Magennis wrote:

> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot
> from it.

Sure, but the code running in the device still has some concept
of what *it* thinks a disk will "look like". Whatever the
prevailing psychosis regarding disks happened to be at the time
the device was manufactured... :>

> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard
> Flash, with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.
>
> Does this make things any easier?

You still have the "what do I think a 'disk' looks like" issue.

If it is just used for storage, do you have to *put* anything on
it, initially? I.e., can the device cope with a "blank" (though
formatted!) disk?

If this is the case, format it as I described (in a PC).

OTOH, if you need to "initialize" it's contents, then you will
want to clone an image off of a "preciously initialized" disk...

> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable proposition?

Yes. "Clonezilla" (et al.) is your friend... You will still
need to do this in a PC -- though you can do it on a PC with the
covers off and your disk(s) (the one being cloned and then the
one you are cloning *to*) dangling from their cables (I have a
small PC that I use for this -- set the drive on top of
the CD-ROM (on top of a pad of paper acting as an insulator)
and "borrow" the cable from the existing disk drive in the PC)

BTW, it probably wouldn't hurt to save a copy of the disk images
that Clonezilla builds for you onto CD or DVD (depending on how
large they actually are) so you have them as a fallback *when*
your disk dies...

== 15 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:21 pm
From: "Brenda Ann"

"Gareth Magennis" <sound.service@btconnect.com> wrote in message
news:EbmdnbK3kMxTR0_RnZ2dnUVZ7qmdnZ2d@bt.com...
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to replace a faulty disk drive on a Roland VS2480 (digital
> audio multitrack recorder). The likely problem (according to Roland
> Service) is that the new IDE drive is too large for the 2480 to format
> correctly.
>
> It goes through the format process of making 4 10GB partitions but always
> fails at the end of it. If you put the failed drive into a PC you can see
> 4 FAT 32 10G drive icons, so the machine is seeing and writing to the
> drive. If you turn on the "physical format" option, the formatting takes
> about 8 hours, and again fails right at the end. I've tried all jumper
> combinations re: Master/slave etc.
>
> I have an old 80G Maxtor drive that the 2480 WILL format, though it is old
> and very noisy. The drive I have bought is a Western Digital 160Gb PATA
> drive. (WD1600AAJB)
>

You will likely need a slightly smaller drive. The old addressing system was
only good to 127GB, so the largest you can likely use is a 120GB drive.

== 16 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:26 pm
From: "Gareth Magennis"

"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:2bb6d61sn1sfemoqagqt7dos9b4ue6cca6@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:03:10 -0700, D Yuniskis
> <not.going.to.be@seen.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>
>>Have you tried putting the drive into a PC and building/formatting
>>your four 10G partitions *there*? IIRC, FAT32 will support up to
>>~30G ...
>
> FAT32 can support drives much larger than that. For example, I'm
> running a 120GB drive on a Win98SE box with a FAT32 file system. You
> may be thinking of Windows XP's artificial 32GB limit.
>
> - Franc Zabkar
> --
> Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

I may have made a mistake on that, it might be FAT 16. ? I'm not able to
verify that right now.

Anyway it is some kind of FAT system that my WinXP desktop recognises.

Having said that, I have looked at forums regarding drives for this unit and
it does seem you need at least a 10mSec access drive for reliability. It
needs to read and write up to 24 tracks of audio.
Would Roland have tried to supercharge (rather than reinvent) the wheel
here, or would they take off the shelf IDE drives and use bog standard
library software to write and read to it?

My new WD drive average is specified below this figure, though its absolute
max seek time is a quoted 20mSec. I wasn't able to clearly establish
what this forum quoted minimum 10mSecs actually means - average or absolute
maximum.

Maybe this is an issue?

Cheers,

Gareth.

== 17 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:35 pm
From: "Gareth Magennis"

"D Yuniskis" <not.going.to.be@seen.com> wrote in message
news:iavb1c$d17$1@speranza.aioe.org...
> Gareth Magennis wrote:
>
>> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot
>> from it.
>
> Sure, but the code running in the device still has some concept
> of what *it* thinks a disk will "look like". Whatever the
> prevailing psychosis regarding disks happened to be at the time
> the device was manufactured... :>
>
>> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard
>> Flash, with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely storage.
>>
>> Does this make things any easier?
>
> You still have the "what do I think a 'disk' looks like" issue.
>
> If it is just used for storage, do you have to *put* anything on
> it, initially? I.e., can the device cope with a "blank" (though
> formatted!) disk?
>
> If this is the case, format it as I described (in a PC).
>
> OTOH, if you need to "initialize" it's contents, then you will
> want to clone an image off of a "preciously initialized" disk...
>
>> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable
>> proposition?
>
> Yes. "Clonezilla" (et al.) is your friend... You will still
> need to do this in a PC -- though you can do it on a PC with the
> covers off and your disk(s) (the one being cloned and then the
> one you are cloning *to*) dangling from their cables (I have a
> small PC that I use for this -- set the drive on top of
> the CD-ROM (on top of a pad of paper acting as an insulator)
> and "borrow" the cable from the existing disk drive in the PC)
>
> BTW, it probably wouldn't hurt to save a copy of the disk images
> that Clonezilla builds for you onto CD or DVD (depending on how
> large they actually are) so you have them as a fallback *when*
> your disk dies...

I will certainly be giving this a go.

Cheers to you and M.P.

Gareth.

== 18 of 18 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 3:36 pm
From: Meat Plow

On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:05:01 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:

> "Meat Plow" <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:pan.2010.11.04.21.55.31@lmao.lol.lol...
>> On Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:42:55 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Interesting stuff guys. Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>> In this case there is no OS on the disk at all, the 2480 does not boot
>>> from it.
>>> I have successfully upgraded the 2480's OS via MIDI onto its onboard
>>> Flash, with no valid hard drive installed. The drive is purely
>>> storage.
>>>
>>> Does this make things any easier?
>>> Is cloning the new drive from the working (noisy) one a viable
>>> proposition?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>> Gareth.
>>
>>
>> It is viable. Would need to be done in a PC, bit for Bit copy. But I'm
>> not sure if you need to clone it without me knowing the file system. I
>> snuck in here late, just what is the equipment. I've spent a couple
>> decades with digital recorders from Fostex, Otari and DVR recorders
>> from SA, Samsung and Cisco. The firmware embedded OS isn't a problem
>> but I'd like to do a little research on what a 2840 is.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.php?ProductId=339
>
>
>
>
> Its kinda old in technology terms, but not that old really.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Gareth.

Have you contacted Roland support? That would be the first thing I would
do. Obviously there is content on the noisy hard drive you wish to
transfer and I am certain this is not a unique situation that Roland/Boss
would have support for.

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Nov 4 2010 10:18 am
From: Myeegy

Hi I am Mygeey Astro from http://www.destle.com/mygeey. Now You can
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