Tsk tsk, the drive was sold (along with dozens of others) explicitely as seen. The seller was quite up front that it might not work, and the price I paid reflected this. I'm not at all bothered, and am actually having fun playing with it.;-)
Or better yet : sell the drive on ebay
Ooh, cruel! No, I wouldn't do that, unless I could find someone who wanted to take a swing at fixing it.
Buying the drive wasn't a commercial decision, I can easily afford a new one. I just believe that hardware should be binned when the Magic Smoke billows out, and not before.;-)
[an] hdd converter [..] will allow you to mount a laptop hdd into a desktop system
Don't bother. I've never seen a desktop BIOS that supports drive passwords. When mounted in a desktop, the controller doesn't respond and the BIOS doesn't see it at all if it's got a password set, and the BIOS has no option to set, change or remove the password.
OTOH, you could try finding some source that handles ATAPI commands, and (perhaps) write a custom app to do this. That would be neat.
Several HDDs I have taken apart have a small flash ROM or EEPROM
I've stripped an identical (but dead and already grinding) Travelstar down to the bones, but can't see any EEPROM or flash on it anywhere, neither on the controller, nor inside the body. This agrees with the information that the password is on the platter itself in a Travelstar.
Heck, if it comes to it, if I have to open the body, I'll go ahead and swap the damn platters over from the dead drive; it's not as though I've got much to lose.;-)
The drive was "sold as seen", and priced to reflect that. The seller shifts dozens of Travelstars, probably IBM rejects. Many of them work OK, because it's not worth anyone's (commercial) time to check an obsolete returned drive, they'll just shovel it out the back door.
I actually expected the drive to be dead, the fact that it's "only" password locked is a bonus, because it gives me something fun to play with.;-)
Thanks for the response, but the poster hasn't tried this on a Travelstar. Until you unlock the drive, you can't do anything to it. I've tried this in 2 DOS laptops, a Linux desktop and a custom system running a PPC and VxWorks. One laptop won't boot at all unless the password is entered (even from floppy or CD-ROM), the other systems booted but then couldn't see the drive. Actually, the VxWorks system saw and mounted the drive, but then couldn't access it at all.
This chip is on the board itself, right? I've only got the drive.:-(
Thanks for the reply though. In response to your first point, I'm really just pursuing this as a personal project, because I feel that hardware should be discarded when the magic smoke gets out and not before.;-)
What bothers me is that UF is now a commercial cash cow
Not a very good one though, as they've just laid off a large chunk of their (bloated.com) staff. There's a rather pathetic begging letter on there recently asking UF readers to find them jobs.
Incidentally (or otherwise), when I asked how I could explain to my HR department how all of the layoffs could be "senior" or "management" or "directors" without that necessarily being indicative of them being just another bunch of over-hyped under-skilled.gone wannabe's, I had my account summarily deleted for trolling. The question (a serious one, which they will be asked by potential employers) was never answered.
Sure, the UF community is friendly. As long as you're utterly compliant with its smug and insular attitude, that is.
I couldn't agree more. I view NASA's budget overruns not as mere incompetency, but as willful theft. They're stealing from the future, both directly by "pre-spending" and indirectly by sending the message that space is a money pit.
The solution? Give NASA 5 years worth of funding and all their current assets ($10,000 hammers and all), and wish them good luck as a private company.
No! You fool! It's a "marker", not a "gun". You'll ruin years of our hard work in trying to persuade people that paintball is a sport for all, not some extreme para-military NRA freakshow, and besides...
Ah, the hell with it.
This thing is awesome! Look at the firepower! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
Hauled up from a post below, I shall now show you why this judgement means exactly squat:
In III.A: Nothing in this provision shall prohibit Microsoft from enforcing any provision of any license with any OEM or any intellectual property right that is not inconsistent with this Final Judgment.
III.J: J. No provision of this Final Judgment shall... Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the disclosure of which would compromise the security of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation, keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria
Gee, Sun, Apple and GNU/Linux guys, we'd love to give you access to all of our specs, but you see, we're so security conscious that we have security protocols at all levels. Yes we do. Or software licensing. Or digital rights management, or encryption or authentication protocols. In fact, we can't find a single source file that's free of at least one of these. So you can look, but then we'll have to kill you.
And we'd like nothing more than to let you OEM guys unininstall components, but, you see, it turns out that anything you want to unbundle will be, I mean, is central to our security and content protection system. Yes, that's right. Instant messenging, browsers, media players, you name it, it's vital.
You don't think so? OK, back to court. Is a three year case OK with you? That should give us time to get another OS out, make your case irrelevant, and insure that the penalty is another (snigger) conduct (giggle) remedy.
And yet it's still true that nobody gets sacked for buying Microsoft. Ironically, just being better than Microsoft isn't enough, because that's different and it might go wrong. You have to be completely interchangeable and a lot cheaper. Hopefully this judgement will move us a little closer to that situation.
Apple has CD burning in the Mac OS (look at their ads - they're making a big deal out of it) yet Microsoft adding it to Windows is evil
Look, what part of "abusive monopoly" are you not understanding?
Apple can be as abusive as they like, because they don't have 70% market share for personal computer operating systems.
Microsoft can have 100% of the market share for personal computer operating systems, as long as they're not abusive.
If you have over 70% market share and you're abusive, the law steps in to protect the market and restore competition. It's really that simple. I can't put it in shorter words.
Microsoft will be required to provide software developers with the interfaces
I'm a software developer. How do I get access to this information?
Sorry, what's that? I have to fly to Redmond, get body searched, sign an NDA in blood, wrap my first born son in $50 million of bearer bonds and place them both in escrow?
calling a computer enthusiast a "hacker" is out like the fat kid in dodgeball
We can turn it around. Gay pride! Geek pride! Hacker pride! Say it loud, say it proud!;-)
Re:Damn Stereotypes...
on
Behind the Scenes
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Linux is built by software enthusiasts, not "hackers."
Gather round grandpa's ol' rocking chair, and he'll tell you a tale from the Olden Days, when the world was young and innocent, and "hacker" was synonymous with "software enthusiast"...;-)
Your judges aren't elected. They don't run campaigns. They get life tenure
And let's say I disagree with that system. What would I do about it? Oh, wait, I'd write to my elected representatives.
People, the time for writing your congressmen is long before the lawsuits start
Sure, because there's no point in changing the law to prevent further abusive lawsuits against similar products in the future, right?
You shouldn't even post "write your congressmen" messages in places like this. It doesn't do anything at all.
It does seem fairly effective at flushing out the apathetic whingers who take some wierd kind of smug pleasure in saying "There's nothing you can do under the current system, so do nothing."
[Amazon] don't really give a shit about Linux itself. They don't have feelings for it. Don't forget that. It is about the money
As a corporate entity, sure, but it's been my experience that a switch from M$ to GNU/Linux requires an internal evangelist. The guys in charge of running the machines have to want to do it, otherwise they can come up with any number of reasons why it's not viable right now.
Somebody in there is GNU/Linux friendly. Let's raise a glass to their health.
Where two systems share a common predetermined protocol, it is almost always more efficient than XML
I hear you. The product that I'm working on right now is XML heavy. It's using entirely proprietary data formats, and the XML processing is taking up 80% of the query time. After achieving full buzzword compliance, we decided that the system is way too slow, and now have to strip the whole bloody lot back out again.
Note that there was no reason to use XML in the first place, other than some designers wanted to put it on their resumes. I kid you not.
Actually, I know that it was, because I wrote it for the Wipout competition, which is spookily enough another/. story of the day.
I wrote this story in early September, pre-11th. It postulates a society where knowledge of crypto is so strongly controlled that... well, read the story.
At the time that I wrote it, it was science fiction. It now looks like I was way too conservative, and events are already on the way towards overtaking my predictions. Hey ho.
No, but when you design a CPU (as AMD did), you plan for the heatsink to fall off.
Why? Really, why would you? You can't protect people from idiot rash. All over AMD's tech documents, you get the message repeated over and over and over: for the love of god, don't power this up without a heat sink and fan. It couldn't be clearer.
You might as well say that AMD should design chips for people who run bare mains voltage wires across the pins. It's willful and self inflicted. You can't design on that basis.
My submission is already out of date. ;-)
on
WipOut Contest
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· Score: 3, Informative
Heh, I submitted this essay in early September, on the theme of mnndatory licensing of encryption know-how. At the time, it was science fiction. In the light of the hacker==terrorist backlash, and the SSSCA, it's already looking out of date and not nearly extreme enough. Go figure.
This is an embarassing truth which GA researchers hate to hear. But GA people need to do this validation or they waste time on problems for which GAs are unsuitable
Amen to that. Back when I was in research, I had endless hours of fun baiting GA reasearchers on just this issue. For all the applications that I tried GA's for (most notably scheduling issues), using a good fitness evaluation function plus a random generator produced usable (but not optimal) results in much shorter times than a breeding program.
I agree that to arrive at a optimal or unique solution in a large search space, GA's have a use, but for most human purposes, just roll the dice and see what you get.
Slashdot Mirror
Tsk tsk, the drive was sold (along with dozens of others) explicitely as seen. The seller was quite up front that it might not work, and the price I paid reflected this. I'm not at all bothered, and am actually having fun playing with it. ;-)
Ooh, cruel! No, I wouldn't do that, unless I could find someone who wanted to take a swing at fixing it.
Buying the drive wasn't a commercial decision, I can easily afford a new one. I just believe that hardware should be binned when the Magic Smoke billows out, and not before. ;-)
Don't bother. I've never seen a desktop BIOS that supports drive passwords. When mounted in a desktop, the controller doesn't respond and the BIOS doesn't see it at all if it's got a password set, and the BIOS has no option to set, change or remove the password.
OTOH, you could try finding some source that handles ATAPI commands, and (perhaps) write a custom app to do this. That would be neat.
I've stripped an identical (but dead and already grinding) Travelstar down to the bones, but can't see any EEPROM or flash on it anywhere, neither on the controller, nor inside the body. This agrees with the information that the password is on the platter itself in a Travelstar.
Heck, if it comes to it, if I have to open the body, I'll go ahead and swap the damn platters over from the dead drive; it's not as though I've got much to lose. ;-)
The drive was "sold as seen", and priced to reflect that. The seller shifts dozens of Travelstars, probably IBM rejects. Many of them work OK, because it's not worth anyone's (commercial) time to check an obsolete returned drive, they'll just shovel it out the back door.
I actually expected the drive to be dead, the fact that it's "only" password locked is a bonus, because it gives me something fun to play with. ;-)
Thanks for the response, but the poster hasn't tried this on a Travelstar. Until you unlock the drive, you can't do anything to it. I've tried this in 2 DOS laptops, a Linux desktop and a custom system running a PPC and VxWorks. One laptop won't boot at all unless the password is entered (even from floppy or CD-ROM), the other systems booted but then couldn't see the drive. Actually, the VxWorks system saw and mounted the drive, but then couldn't access it at all.
This chip is on the board itself, right? I've only got the drive. :-(
Thanks for the reply though. In response to your first point, I'm really just pursuing this as a personal project, because I feel that hardware should be discarded when the magic smoke gets out and not before. ;-)
Not a very good one though, as they've just laid off a large chunk of their (bloated .com) staff. There's a rather pathetic begging letter on there recently asking UF readers to find them jobs.
Incidentally (or otherwise), when I asked how I could explain to my HR department how all of the layoffs could be "senior" or "management" or "directors" without that necessarily being indicative of them being just another bunch of over-hyped under-skilled .gone wannabe's, I had my account summarily deleted for trolling. The question (a serious one, which they will be asked by potential employers) was never answered.
Sure, the UF community is friendly. As long as you're utterly compliant with its smug and insular attitude, that is.
I couldn't agree more. I view NASA's budget overruns not as mere incompetency, but as willful theft. They're stealing from the future, both directly by "pre-spending" and indirectly by sending the message that space is a money pit.
The solution? Give NASA 5 years worth of funding and all their current assets ($10,000 hammers and all), and wish them good luck as a private company.
No! You fool! It's a "marker", not a "gun". You'll ruin years of our hard work in trying to persuade people that paintball is a sport for all, not some extreme para-military NRA freakshow, and besides...
Ah, the hell with it.
This thing is awesome! Look at the firepower! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
There are no operating systems in direct competition with Windows. I'll type this very... very... slowly... Abusive. Monopoly.
Hauled up from a post below, I shall now show you why this judgement means exactly squat:
In III.A: Nothing in this provision shall prohibit Microsoft from enforcing any provision of any license with any OEM or any intellectual property right that is not inconsistent with this Final Judgment.
III.J: J. No provision of this Final Judgment shall... Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the disclosure of which would compromise the security of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation, keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria
Gee, Sun, Apple and GNU/Linux guys, we'd love to give you access to all of our specs, but you see, we're so security conscious that we have security protocols at all levels. Yes we do. Or software licensing. Or digital rights management, or encryption or authentication protocols. In fact, we can't find a single source file that's free of at least one of these. So you can look, but then we'll have to kill you.
And we'd like nothing more than to let you OEM guys unininstall components, but, you see, it turns out that anything you want to unbundle will be, I mean, is central to our security and content protection system. Yes, that's right. Instant messenging, browsers, media players, you name it, it's vital.
You don't think so? OK, back to court. Is a three year case OK with you? That should give us time to get another OS out, make your case irrelevant, and insure that the penalty is another (snigger) conduct (giggle) remedy.
And yet it's still true that nobody gets sacked for buying Microsoft. Ironically, just being better than Microsoft isn't enough, because that's different and it might go wrong. You have to be completely interchangeable and a lot cheaper. Hopefully this judgement will move us a little closer to that situation.
Look, what part of "abusive monopoly" are you not understanding?
Apple can be as abusive as they like, because they don't have 70% market share for personal computer operating systems.
Microsoft can have 100% of the market share for personal computer operating systems, as long as they're not abusive.
If you have over 70% market share and you're abusive, the law steps in to protect the market and restore competition. It's really that simple. I can't put it in shorter words.
I'm a software developer. How do I get access to this information?
Sorry, what's that? I have to fly to Redmond, get body searched, sign an NDA in blood, wrap my first born son in $50 million of bearer bonds and place them both in escrow?
We can turn it around. Gay pride! Geek pride! Hacker pride! Say it loud, say it proud! ;-)
Gather round grandpa's ol' rocking chair, and he'll tell you a tale from the Olden Days, when the world was young and innocent, and "hacker" was synonymous with "software enthusiast"... ;-)
Try StarOffice 6 beta 3. You might be very pleasantly surprised.
And let's say I disagree with that system. What would I do about it? Oh, wait, I'd write to my elected representatives.
Sure, because there's no point in changing the law to prevent further abusive lawsuits against similar products in the future, right?
It does seem fairly effective at flushing out the apathetic whingers who take some wierd kind of smug pleasure in saying "There's nothing you can do under the current system, so do nothing."
As a corporate entity, sure, but it's been my experience that a switch from M$ to GNU/Linux requires an internal evangelist. The guys in charge of running the machines have to want to do it, otherwise they can come up with any number of reasons why it's not viable right now.
Somebody in there is GNU/Linux friendly. Let's raise a glass to their health.
Good fiction too. Isn't it in Lucifer's Hammer that Larry postulates a planet killer with the consistency of a hot fudge sundae? Lovely imagery.
I hear you. The product that I'm working on right now is XML heavy. It's using entirely proprietary data formats, and the XML processing is taking up 80% of the query time. After achieving full buzzword compliance, we decided that the system is way too slow, and now have to strip the whole bloody lot back out again.
Note that there was no reason to use XML in the first place, other than some designers wanted to put it on their resumes. I kid you not.
Actually, I know that it was, because I wrote it for the Wipout competition, which is spookily enough another /. story of the day.
I wrote this story in early September, pre-11th. It postulates a society where knowledge of crypto is so strongly controlled that... well, read the story.
At the time that I wrote it, it was science fiction. It now looks like I was way too conservative, and events are already on the way towards overtaking my predictions. Hey ho.
Why? Really, why would you? You can't protect people from idiot rash. All over AMD's tech documents, you get the message repeated over and over and over: for the love of god, don't power this up without a heat sink and fan. It couldn't be clearer.
You might as well say that AMD should design chips for people who run bare mains voltage wires across the pins. It's willful and self inflicted. You can't design on that basis.
Heh, I submitted this essay in early September, on the theme of mnndatory licensing of encryption know-how. At the time, it was science fiction. In the light of the hacker==terrorist backlash, and the SSSCA, it's already looking out of date and not nearly extreme enough. Go figure.
Amen to that. Back when I was in research, I had endless hours of fun baiting GA reasearchers on just this issue. For all the applications that I tried GA's for (most notably scheduling issues), using a good fitness evaluation function plus a random generator produced usable (but not optimal) results in much shorter times than a breeding program.
I agree that to arrive at a optimal or unique solution in a large search space, GA's have a use, but for most human purposes, just roll the dice and see what you get.