Diet Progress
Eleven days, 9 pounds. I certainly did not help that we went to the Outback tonight and I had a Wallaby Darn (or two).

Parts is Parts
Back in February I ordered some parts from my truck from ChevyDuty. Earlier this week I checked on the order, and the parts were still on back order and the arrival date had slipped again. Yesterday I received a coupon in the mail from YearOne for 20% off my next order (if placed within 10 days).

I decided to call up Year One and if the parts I wanted were in stock I would cancel my previous order. Today I called Chevy Duty to cancel. Fortunately for them, they were unable to cancel the order because they had shipped it out earlier in the afternoon. A little bit later I even received a UPS tracking number in the mail. I guess I can use the coupon to buy the patch panel for the other side.

More L6278
This is the message that reminded me I never finished up the post on the harddrive controller chip swap.

Hi Rick,
I found your blog while doing a search for an L6278. I laughed when I read your story about what happened to you and your hard drive. Not because you lost data, but because it’s the exact same story as mine (I feel your pain). I own a Western Digital 80 Gb drive manufactured in 01 that smoked the L6278. Similarily I don't care about the drive, but stupid me, I had 3 years of digital memories on it.
Before searching the internet and finding your blog, I'd gone through the same excersise of locating similar drives with the L6278 chip and swapping drive controllers. Same as you, it didn't work (same drive with different dates = no good). Thankfully I didn't ruin any other drives in the process.
So anyways, you never posted a follow up to your blog after you tried soldering the new IC. I'm very curious to know if it worked and if so, I'll be wanting to try that too! Please let me know your findings as I'd be a very happy person if I could recover my digital photos.
Sincerely,
Drew K