HDD replacement question

[eoinzy]

Hi,

I have a Battle Gear 3 cab.

I suspect one of the hard drives is dead, and the other is not too healthy.

I have cloned the 30GB "working" HDD using dd in linux and now want to restore it to another HDD I buy.

From looking online, people are saying I might need to get the same model hard drive as the original. Since these were manufactured in 2003, I was hoping to get a more modern HDD, or maybe a cheap SSD and use an IDE->SATA adapter.

I saw with the newer Battle Gear 4, that the security dongle was apparently tied to the HDD serial number. Is this the case with BG3?

Can I just clone the image to any new HDD or is there other things I need to consider here?

Thanks!

 

[TheDaddy]

I could be wrong but i think its more what the board will recognise. Being made in 2003 ssd and big drives were not available so the board wont know whats plugged in. I doubt ide to sata would work for the same reason.

Dave.TheDaddy2020-04-02 23:53:16

 

[andyman]

Dave is likely right...driver specific or partioning maybe also be an issue if the board only uses FAT32...big drive wont format past that limit (or wont be seen by the OS)

I have a few old HDs...what make/model is it ?

 

[jinq-sea]

You could otherwise do IDE -> CF a la Amiga?

 

[TheDaddy]

You could otherwise do IDE -> CF a la Amiga?

Good point here , Worth a go certainly wont harm !

 

[eoinzy]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

My understanding of the IDE<->SATA converter is that, for all intents and purposes, the cab will see an IDE hard drive. The conversion takes place in the adapter. At least thats what I thought. I'll have to double check. But if i was to get an SSD, it'd be a small one, eg 60GB max. The .img of the drive is 40GB anyway. OR worst case scenario, just format the SSD to around 40GB.

RE: IDE -> CF, thats a new one on me. I'm not familiar with it. During my research online, I found someone use an "IDE DOM Module". Would it be similar?

RE: Drive model: Western Digital WD400EB (x2) and a Maxtor Fireball 3 VAM51JJO (I think).

I bought the cab from a guy who gave me one working System246a box and 2 non-working System246c boxes, which he reckoned I could make 1 working box from, hence the 3 HDDs. I only have 2 security dongles though.

I bought an external USB caddy to put the IDE HDDs in and perform a test. I only had time to test the first one, from the 264a, and it seems fine. I did a lower level test as neither Windows nor Linux can mount the Filesystem, so its either dead, corrupted, or not NTFS/FAT/EXT4.

The best I've managed with that box is to get it booting, do the intro to the game, and then it crashed after maybe <5 mins. After that, I couldn't get it to boot. So I'm thinking maybe the HDD overheated, or is on its last legs and failed after the 5 mins or so. Of course, it could be one of the other components that is on the way out. I'm only at the early troubleshooting phase now, so I want to rule out the HDDs being the culprit.

This is also why I was asking about the security dongles. I started another thread on here last week (and forgot to reply to, sorry!

) and the response was to try the other security dongle. This is what got me the 5 minutes but then I got another error afterwards.

So it went from this (with dongle 1):

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP8oPqUl1-MK5uQCjce2482h4QnES56T2WjwEPyOWZ-IhP2qgTKo4fz6hvr0XeIJg/photo/AF1QipP1NLybonvDcBynmPzUU8b3Nk4xQR6axr1HPbFn?key=VzRlaC1TcVdTcUhDc3otdk5ndFBkRmJQb0ZtR0V3

to this (with dongle 2):

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNuOA_yLjl2qd89JaSEyXNkmkqJadhmratHhTo2xlwM8oUHA1FnM0ymkRVK9h4UOA/photo/AF1QipMwV1Tr6YcQo_yakqpxtmbf7bJIR5v8JQnqnCxK?key=WURfdDlaVVgzU2JZZ2pBYzRQTmNnSTB6VTctREN3

Only difference is a different "tone" of the beep.

So the other question I had. Say if all my HDDs were to die, is there a way to get a factory image that I could flash to a new HDD? Or is that a bit of a grey area like emulator ROMs?

Thanks.

eoinzy2020-04-03 13:50:57

 

[andyman]

Have had a look through my IDE drives, all 130 of them and I have nothing over 10GB here...sorry it took some time...have Maxtor & Fireball too but previous models

 

[eoinzy]

No worries at all. A neighbour gave me an old Sky+ box so I'm gonna take the HDD out of that.

In Ubuntu, I used dd to make an image of the 2 HDDs I could mount so I can put one of those images on the new HDD.

Being able to get an image of the HDDs got me thinking that they're actually fine and its actually the security dongle that is faulty. Is there a way to get either a full image without the security (probably a piracy issue even after all these years), or even a demo image that I can just use to make sure the rest of the boards and HDDs are operational? I know there's other games that work on system246 so maybe I can flash one of them without the need for a dongle, at least for now. The purpose really is just to get something loaded so I can pinpoint the issue to the HDD or dongle.

I was actually doing more research and found a load of people who hacked their PS2's and apparently there's a homebrew loader they used to boot to, which gives them access to a HDD for loading games etc. I wonder could I flash that to the new HDD, just to see if I could get some picture to display.

Also also, after yet more research on this, I stumbled across this website:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1_nbn/gurudumps/system246/index.html

which states:

There are 2 main versions of the Namco System 246 hardware, the newest one being smaller. The original System 246 contains a standard Sony PS2 main board (GH-006) and is bolted to a custom Namco I/O board containing some FPGAs and RAM, plus several connectors. The older hardware won't run the newer games. The newer System 246 comes in a smaller metal box and as a single custom PCB (there's no PS2 main board anymore but the same chips are present). Mostly likely the rest of it remains the same, capability-wise.

Now, on my cab I have 1 system246a and 2 system246c's. Now I'm wondering if the Rev.C boxes are backwards compatible with the original chassis. It has all the same connectors so maybe (hopefuly) I'm wrong and they work fine.

I find myself spending hours online researching these things. Next up is the error codes on boot. With the system246c's, I get weird dashboard lights. For example, the "hazard light" button will go red, as well as a singe light on the dashboard. Anothet time I got no dash lights but the marquee turned orange. Then yesterday the whole dash lit up red, along with the start button. Would these be random, or would they represent an error code? I have the manual downloaded so I'll go through that next.