Gregory's Serverkinda horrifying but this is the best way to test SMD parts out of circuit.
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141 comments
  @tubetime that's a slightly unsettling image, idk why. random thought: if you're testing precise values, don't forget that MLCC capacitance rises significantly during soldering and takes around 48h to return to nominal, which may still be much higher than it was in-circuit due to aging. capacitor manufacturers tend to physically cut them out of the circuit when they're doing failure analysis.  OK, infodrop for you folks! https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo the schematic PDF is in the repo as well as the KiCad source files. i'll be examining the firmware as well as the earlier board revisions. going to figure out what some of these custom chips do. this one is "10223-502." this one seems to be for retracting the heads using the stepper motor when power is lost to the drive. hmm yes it sequences the stepper motor using the spindle motor's back EMF as the clock! i've collected more information on the ASICs at https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo. the "ring lsi" is interesting. it provides an adjustable linear regulator to set the stepper motor supply voltage (set through SPI bus) and it monitors the "ringing" on a winding after it has been driven and is settling. i've moved on to the read/write LSI. the read channel is somewhat tricky because it uses four (!) one-shot timers to turn the raw analog signal coming from the read preamplifiers into an output pulse that represents a flux transition. this later revision of the st-251 uses a mask-ROM microcontroller. it's very similar to the R6518, at least in the pinout. it also latches its internal address bus on a bunch of the pins during the rising edge of phi2! this means i can spy on the program counter and any other memory addresses being accessed. the firmware from the older board revision (which uses an external EPROM chip) has been dumped and (mostly) analyzed! see https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo/blob/main/st251/firmware/ST251_commented.txt unfortunately we don't have a dump of the protected mask ROM, but it seems to be somewhat similar, and the 6502 puts *every* address it accesses on the bus, so you can see it accessing special function registers and the stack, allowing you to infer quite a bit about what is going on. here's where things get really interesting. i've pulled in the imagery of the early ST-251 board and overlaid my Kicad traces from the newer revision. it's almost like a visual diff--now i can see exactly what changes were made between board versions, which means i can back out a schematic as well! well that was epic! i've completely reverse engineered this older revision. details in the repo (https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo) another day, another board revision! this one has minor electrical changes from the previous one, mainly adding control over the spindle motor *power level* from the microcontroller. that way they were able to lower the average power consumption. https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo/tree/main/st251/21020 this is the control board for the ST-225 hard drive. it's an earlier revision. so far it's not too dissimilar from the ST-251 but the stepper motor driver circuit is quite different. and just like that...the ST225 logic board is now in KiCad. check it out: https://github.com/schlae/HardDriveInfo @tubetime @tubetime I've never wanted to play a DOOM map this badly in my life. turns out there is another variation of the ST-225 logic board. looks like a cost reduction. OK, this one is done! amazingly, it also helped me solve a mystery on the ST-251. on this later drive, the board has a custom chip that captures data from the current track and outputs a "processed" version of it to the MCU through the PA2 GPIO pin. how does it process it? i didn't know until today. so the 20527 board in the ST-225 uses a discrete circuit for doing the same task. it has two 74123 one-shot pulse generators connected in series with each other and going out to the MCU (on PA7 because this board uses a variant). the key observation is that the pin state depends on the frequency of the signal coming in. for DC, it is normally low. for frequencies *higher* than about 2.6MHz, it also stays low. but for a particular window of frequencies (1.4 to 2.6MHz) the pin goes *high*. why is this useful? it turns out that these drives have a 1.75MHz signal recorded onto specific tracks, letting the MCU (which controls the stepper motor) know if it has gone outside of the data area. so basically, you step around, and if you see this pin go high (and stay high) then you know you're out of bounds. there is a special signal recorded at track -2. it is the same 1.75MHz but it has short bursts of twice the frequency (2F). this lets the MCU know that (1) it is at track -2, and (2) it lets it synchronize the hall effect sensors. you get multiple pulses per revolution, so you need a way to sync up the divider chain so you get an index signal that is repeatable. so from the ST-225 to the ST-251, this function got swallowed up in the drive interface chip. but at least now i know how it works. someone's dumped the MOS version of this microcontroller using a clever circuit and a test mode. i don't know if it will work with the NCR version of the chip, however. let's see what happens when i throw the switch. it's putting 10V bursts on the reset pin, so i hope nothing gets damaged. no luck, sadly. it's supposed to be clocking in a program over PORTC, but there appears to be output contention (see how the voltage levels on ch4 don't always make it to a logic high)  i'm not giving up. maybe it needs more clocks before bringing reset high. the datasheet says "at least 8"  @tubetime Have you figured out yet how it syncs up the divider chain? @developing_agent yes it pulses a GPIO pin and that clears the divider flip flop. @tubetime I mean more like knowing when to do that (which 2F region should be the index pulse), or is that arbitrary and doesn't matter? @developing_agent the 2F region is once per revolution, so i think it doesn't matter as long as it is consistent. my guess is the edge between the 2F and 1.75MHz regions. @tubetime If there's only one 2F region, what do you get multiple pulses of per revolution? (and need a divider chain for?) @developing_agent you get multiple pulses per revolution off the spindle motor's hall effect sensor. you need a way to divide this down (usually with a chain of T flip flops) to get a pulse that occurs once per revolution. the disk controller uses this to place the sectors in their correct locations. it needs to be in the same spot every time otherwise the controller will get confused. @tubetime Ah, so the divider chain is driven from the spindle hall effect sensor, and the single 2F region sets which hall pulse is the zero index. @tubetime The ST-412 has an NCR 6500/1. This was also used in the Amiga keyboard controller. There's a schematic floating around from the Amiga ppl for a circuit which dumps out a 6500/1's internal ROM. I still have the 6500/1 off my dead ST-412, but haven't gotten around to making the dumper yet. Wonder if a similar circuit could be used for R6518... @cr1901 i found this: https://e4aws.silverdr.com/hacks/6500_1/ but it seems to be for the Commodore version of the 6500/1 @cr1901 also i think the st-412 (at least one version) also uses an external EPROM which has been dumped and is on bitsavers. @tubetime whatever happened to the capsoff people who used to dump arcade maskroms/maskrom microcontrollers? are they still around anywhere? @tubetime I can actually help with the 11695-502. It's a speed control chip, also used on the ST-225. It looks like the Seagate custom motor driver the later-production ST-251 uses combines the Hitachi chip, the 11695-502, and the glue op amps from the early production board (as seen on that dubiously-correct M.I.T. schematic on BItsavers). @lee4hmz ahh very interesting, I'll have to use that to fill in details when i get to the other board revs. @tubetime at least if any parts are dead theyre already in the cemetary! |
@tubetime I have to imagine this is what Tombstone, AZ looks like