Friday 29 October 2010

Serial connection to Seagate Dockstar via FTDI USB-Serial Cable

Here's a quick summary of how to use a FTDI data cable to connect to a Seagate Dockstar.

Requirements


Making the Connector

  1. Cut the cable of the Xbox power connector in half.
  2. You're interested in the 3 pins at the top left (looking from behind), so seperate these and strip them.
  3. Snap a strip of male header pins so that you have 5 pins. Remove pins #2 and #3
  4. Solder the top left-most pin (GND) to header pin #1
  5. Solder the top next pin (TX) to pin #5
  6. Solder the top third pin (RX) to pin #4


Connecting

  1. Plug pin #1 of the header pins into the socket to connect to the black cable of the USB-serial cable
    (this will mean that pin #4 goes to the orange, and #5 to yellow)

  2. Open your dockstar and plug the xbox connector onto the header pins (if you orientate your dockstar so the header pins are at
    the top, the xbox top-left wire connects to the dockstar top-left pin)

  3. Plug in your USB-serial cable to your PC

  4. Open putty and use the following connection settings: -
    Serial
    Serial line: COM5 (or whatever COM port the USB-serial adapter has)
    Speed: 115200
    Data bits: 8
    Stop bits: 1
    Parity: none
    Flow control: none

  5. Click "Open" in putty

  6. Power up the Dockstar

  7. Watch the putty window - the boot-up messages should appear.

1 comment:

  1. Good article. Thank you.
    http://www.box.net/shared/8guoosaf43

    ReplyDelete