L6278

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I few months ago I turned my computer off. I was leaving town for a few days on vacation and I didn't really care to leave it on while I was away. The machine I reference is my Windows XP machine, not my Linux box that is hosting this site. The vacation was a trip to Pigeon Forge.

After returning from the trip, I turned the computer on. Now everyone that has paid attention knows that computers usually die when they are being turned on. You might consider a lightning strike as an attempt to turn it on all the way to 11. Yes it is true, when I turned it on, the magic smoke escaped from an IC on the controller of a 40 Gig Western Digital hard drive. The drive was manufactured way back in 2001 if you can believe the date printed on it. And yes the smoke is magic, mainly because with out the smoke it will no longer work and it would be a true feat of magic to put it back.

The IC in question is an ST L6278 1.2. ST means that it is an SGS Thompson part. The L6278 is simply a part number. Basically it is the motor control chip.

So heres what we know. The hard drive quit working. I checked digikey and several other sources but was unable to find a replacement part.

Western Digital said they would replace the drive. It was still under warranty, but they would not repair it. Guess what is on this drive? Your right! This is the drive I use to back up all the good stuff. In some cases the good stuff only lives on the backup drive. Doesn't make it much of a backup does it? I am not interested in get the drive replaced, what I want is the data back.

I checked with one of those data recovery places. There estimate for retrieving the data from the failed drive was between $800 and $3000 dollars. Sure no problem.

It turns out there are a few hard drives in the house. As a matter of fact I have an old 100 Meg drive you can have just for the asking. Let me know ASAP and I will send it too you. One of the drives around here has a L6278 1.2 on it. Most of the others either have the older L6262 or some labeled SMOOTH.

I tried taking the controller board from that HD and putting it on the dead HD. It make some nice clicking sounds but it wouldn't access the drive. I put the functional drive back together and it still works! Whew! I also tried another controller board with the same form factor. Same results. Click click click.

So now I am eyeing the L6278 1.2 that resides on a function HD. The IC is a 44 pin quad flat pack. With the right tools I could desolder it from one board and resolder it to the other. Attempt to read my data off and then move it back again. With any luck I would have my data and the functional drive would remain functional.

Here is a problem. I don't have a good desoldering tool and the tip on my soldering iron is not fine enough to solder a 44p QFP back on.

I know a guy that has the skill and access to the tools to get the job done right. I will be checking into this in the next day or so. Did I mention the drive with the good IC is not in my computer. Now that is a detail not to be over looked.

When I set out to get the solder this weekend I was planning on doing it myself, but I had forgotten how small a leads on the chip are. I know my limits. I still needed the solder though. I pretty much used up what I had building up the wiring harness for the new radio.
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Tomorrow is a Miata day. Haven't quite gotten all the way though the U2 CD yet. And for those taking notes, when playing MP3s, the player picks up at the same point in the song as where it was when it was turned off.