Some days you eat the checksum, some days the checksum eats you

I'm trying to use hddhackr to flash a new WD 250 gb sata drive for my xbox. Hddhackr is on a usb stick and bootable. I have an old pc, Asus A7V8X-X, AMD processor, all built in 2003. There is no specific SATA support on the mobo/user manual, no sata connectors, etc.

Booting to XP, the pc can see the WD (connected by a cute little usb converter box) so I could apparently format it and use it as a backup or whatever, but hddhackr, used in automatic mode, cannot find it; it just sees the native IDE stuff. I figure the WD needed to be connected more directly to the bus, so I bought a PCI sata card (with drivers). But again hddhackr said "No ATA devices found!"

I found some discussion on the web concerning "manual mode" for hddhackr that used part of the hexadecimal address of the IDE port to find drives should the auto mode not work. Plus, the sata card software (seen during system boot) indicated the WD was located on channel 2 (the secondary IDE channel). My secondary IDE address ends in 0170, thus "hddhackr [d, c, f, r] 0170 A0" (A0 is shorthand for the sata drive itself).

Here is what I entered at the prompt: hddhackr c 0170 a0

Using the "c" argument (c = create partitions), hddhackr worked fine, creating partitions 0/2/3 perfectly. However, the "f" argument (f = flash the WD hardware) does not work. Here is the line I entered: hddhackr f 0170 a0 hddss.bin undo.bin

So this is where I get eaten by the checksum error message: "Checksum (0778) in HDDSS.BIN is wrong!" And that is where the story ends so far. Any clues out there? PS: If I boot with the usb stick alone (i.e., system drive disconnected) hddhackr, even in manual mode, cannot find any sata devices. I have redownloaded/extracted the hack files just in case of corruption; no improvement. The sata card is not a recent product; the company (Promise) is out of business and there are no updated drivers out there.

This is too much for ol' Duder's head. C'mon you teenage hackers, solve this for me, help an old man!

 

Did you rename the file to hddss.bin?

 

the checksum ate me

Thanks for your reply, Rick, however not sure I follow you. HDDSS.BIN was extracted from a zip download (ver 1.30) from what appears to be a safe site. The tutorial directs the user to enter that title in the command line in order to save the undo file/firnware data to the flash drive. Is there something else I could be doing with hddss.bin?

I actually tried using ver 1.25 last night. It directed me to turn the drive off/on (disconnect it) from the power connector during the flash sequence (which went into a loop), which I did, and according to the message, sectors 16-22 were rewritten, so there was some "success?" there. It could not create an undo file and save the firmware data for a future undo. Also, the xbox did not seem to recognize the drive, so I am still far from shore.

 

Thanks, Nutter, yes, this was my fear shortly after I started this project. Old mobo, old bios are definite speed bumps, but something that a determine hacker has to expect. I am at least having partial success with the sata controller as it permitted creation of partitions 0/2/3 as called for in the tutorial. I have also ordered another (newer) sata controller which may be better able to talk to the mobo (which has no sata ports). I'll probably give in eventually and look for a friend who has an appropriate laptop.

 

Problem solved

Problem solved, leave me alone I'm playing Red Dead from my new WD disk.

I had ordered a new sata controller card and this one worked. It arrived yesterday, so I installed it, loaded its drivers, and booted to dos; ran hddhackr and it worked slicker than goose grease, first time, all the way through to the last message. I put the WD into my xbox and it was recognized right away. I formatted it and downloaded Undead Nightmare.

Here is what I think happened. My first controller (mighty cheap) had drivers that dated from 2003. I don't know when the card itself was actually manufactured (Promise is out of business) but it was made possibly near that time frame, back when sata drives were just breaking out into the market.

The second controller card seems to be newer. How can I tell? Hard to say. Items on ebay don't advertise a freshness date, but the item description was a little more elaborate and the layout seemed more professional. However when I studied the photographs, I was worried that even though the description mentioned PCI, the card contacts seemed too long to fit in a standard 32-bit slot, so I emailed the company with my concerns and they replied same-day with another diagram that eased my worries. Plus, even though the item was undoubtedly made in China, this company was located in California so the card was likely to get to me faster than another card from a Hong Kong seller.

The drivers were dated from 2010 so that was good, and sure enough hddhackr listed the two sata ports on the card, one of which contained the WD 250. Is there a moral here? If nothing else, it may be incumbent on moderators and master hackers to add these kinds of solutions to existing tutorials so that future hackers can use them with less frustration. The tutorials and their audiences are, of course, works in progress. Believe me, with the economy the way it is, there are lots of older systems out there, many of which are bound to be pre-sata hand-me-downs owned by kids and other members of the 47%!

I would leave a link to the product I purchased but it would probably expire fairly soon. Here is the title of the card (which cost me a little less than ten dollars):
IDE SATA Serial ATA eSATA PCI Controller Card+Cable PC

The only brand name I could see anywhere was in the software itself and not in the ebay description: VIA.
Let me know if you'd like any more input.