Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 18:24:35 -0700 From: "Daryle A. Tilroe" Subject: I feel your pain.... After devoting well over a day of my life to this thankless quest I have a couple of things to report. The Dell disk with fup.exe seems to work just fine with the v275-15 file up to the point of actual download. The binary image is sent but the drive (4322NP 27807-xxx4.61) just sits there with a very rapidly flashing amber led (h/w fault according to seagate docs). If fup is run in interactive mode it seems to expect the flash to be done in a couple of minutes because you see it requery the drive, however the drive is just hung in some sort of state. On the bright side the existing firmware seems unaffected. I have a 4324NP 28388-xxx4AFA that I may try later. I have heard that the v275-15 f/w might only work with the epromed 4320 series drives. I have the eprom equipment but no 4320 yet to try it on, although I have one or two more hardware graveyards to sift through. Well I think that's it so far, I'm going to turn my attention to one of my SDT-9000s and see what the deal is with the SGI specific firmware. All this just to burn a CD of a few of my sister's songs... well I do like a challenge but this is looking like a heartbreaker... -- Daryle A. Tilroe Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:58:44 -0700 From: "Daryle A. Tilroe" Subject: DAT still really hurts! Well the file "v5ac-0.hex" is not the long lost audio firmware. I flashed my 4326 28388-xxx5.45 with it and now it reports 28388-xxx5.ac but does no audio. On the bright side everything still works. The file that would be the audio firmware should report something like 01931-5.ac/5.56/5.63/5.acb, all variations I have found references to. It would likely be called "v5ac-15" (-15 part is the OEM reference I believe) based on this tidbit: http://www.zianet.com/jgray/dat/notes.html Anyhow if you can find a file "v5***-15" it is likely the one and I would love to try it. -- Daryle A. Tilroe Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 01:30:55 -0700 From: "Daryle A. Tilroe" Subject: DAT pain in my ass! >From another source I got ahold of a v5ac-15.hex firmware file. Unfortunately I am still unable to get things working. The file t5ac-15.hex looks like a valid firmware file. When feeding it to fup.exe to flash the 4326 it seems that the file name must be in the form v*-*.hex to be recognized as a valid hex file so I had to rename it to v5ac-15.hex for starters. I have two versions of fup.exe, v1.5 & v1.6. With 1.6 I have to run with the /force flag or it claims that the firmware is incompatible with the drive. After that the hex file gets converted into a binary image as per usual however then the program immediately dies with the error: "*** Write Buffer Command Failed ***". v1.5 seems to always operate in the force mode and it has fewer echoes as to progress. It just hangs with the last notification that it is waiting for the response to the new firmware inquiry. I suspect that the same thing is happening behind the scenes. Somehow the firmware is just not quite right. This could be a problem with fup not quite being compatible (or intentionally crippled) for this different OEM firmware or the existing firmware may not support a large enough buffer to accept the new firmware (it is slightly larger) or again the existing firmware may be slightly crippled. Another possibility is that the 28388-xxx5.ac that I previously flashed the 4326 to is causing the problem (unfortunately I had no way to back up the 28388-xxx5.45 before I tried the first v5ac-0.hex file). I did confirm that I can still flash the 28388-xxx5.ac with itself (v5ac-0.hex) so the ability to flash is still there. It may be possible to defeat some crude crippling by manually editing some of the .hex file to make it think it is still a 28388 series but leave the audio code in. Unfortunately this would be shooting in the dark and very risky. I am tempted to just replace the first line however this method would likely screw up the checksums and refuse to flash and almost certainly royally screw up the drive even if it did flash. Agghhh! What to do next? This challenge grows frustrating. -- Daryle A. Tilroe Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 10:48:47 -0700 From: "Daryle A. Tilroe" Subject: Re: DAT pain in my ass! Ade Rixon wrote: > Both the T5.AC-15 firmware you have and the 2.75-15 firmware above > *should* have audio capability and be compatible with 4326 drives > according to the sources I have read (mainly > ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/pub/DATlib/README.datlib). I don't > know why they won't work. In the former case, I can only hazard a guess > that the firmware may be corrupted in some way. Have you tried 2.75-15 > again, since installing the standard Peregrine f/w? I actually haven't tried the 2.75-15 on the 2326. Have you heard of someone using the 2.75-15 on the 2326? It was my understanding that that was the EPROM code for the 2320 only. I might try just try it anyhow. What bothers me is that fup won't flash the 5.ac-15 since that is supposed to be the exact correct one for the 2326. I don't think it is corrupt as on casual observation it look very much like the 5.ac-0 but with some different/extra code. > You have considered borrowing an audio DAT drive and a digital S/PDIF > soundcard instead? That would be admitting defeat! I shall never surrender. :-) I actually already have an S/PDIF on my SBlive and could probably borrow an audio DAT (actually I have already asked a few people.). But that would be cheating and probably set me up for a few rate resampling problems. This SHOULD be an easier way to doit . If only damned Seagate or Sony would quit being so afraid of the recording industry and, at least quietly, make available the proper firmware, flash utils, and documentation. Grrrrrr... -- Daryle A. Tilroe Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 10:50:08 -0600 From: "Daryle A. Tilroe" Subject: Re: [Hello. re: dat audio] Daryle, Re.: DAT audio & DDS drives. Thought you might find the following email interesting. Seems the DAT firmware can only be installed by burning it on to a fresh EPROM. Feel free to email Jim if you want to swap war stories (please copy me in on anything interesting). Ade_ / ----- Forwarded message from Jim Lilly ----- Jim Lilly wrote: > Whew! Anyway, that's about where things stand right now. What I'm hoping > is that I can link up with you and your contacts and fill in the missing > pieces. While my friend is working on the software, I've been trying to > work on the drives with the flash firmware with absolutely NO luck. I've > been using 3 programs: the fup.exe out of the dell package, flashdat.exe > which I can't remember where I found it Hmmm. If you have "flashdat.exe" you have somehow stumbled upon secret audio firmware illuminati information :-). , and rompaq.exe from the compaq > site. I believe we have a copy of audio capable firmware which will work in > these drives, but I can't flash ANY firmware onto these drives. The compaq > flasher fails to find any devices, but that might be because it's looking > for the compaq proprietary scsi card. The fup and flashdat seem to begin to > work, but end up failing with a "Write Command Buffer Failed" error. So if > you or a friend could point out the errors in my ways or give me a tip I'd > be forever grateful. If you have a 4326 then the above might be an aspi problem. Everything worked fine for for me once I got ahold of the proper 5ac firmware (01931-xxx5.ac (v5ac-15)). I believe "flashdat.exe" predates the Saboware "fup.exe" (I have no idea why Seagate comissioned a second flash util. I think it is a little more, shall we say, forceful. One important note. It appears that the firmware may claim it is receiving a flash but will not update if the new version number is the same as the old one, regardless of the OEM version number. This is somewhat odd but explains why people were having problems flashing after applying the evil DELL v5ac-52 firmware. In other words the effect of this is that if you want to go from 28388-xxx5.ac (v5ac-52) (no audio) to 01931-xxx5.ac (v5ac-15) (audio) you first need to flash back to something other that a *5.ac firmware (in my case I used 02801-xxx5.67 (v567-61)). Of course if you already have a non 5.ac revision with any OEM number you should be able to go directly to 01931-xxx5.ac (v5ac-15). You know come to think of it I may have got the error you describe but the flash was completely successful, it was a while ago. Perhaps you are experiencing the above problem. What you need to note is the model numbers of the drives, the exact firmware on them right now, and what firmware you are trying to flash them with. Anyhow I did my little project and now the drive sits idle. Let me know if you have any other questions or if you want the secret audio firmware illuminati passphrase. :-) -- Daryle A. Tilroe