JVC SR-DVM600 DVM700 DVM70 SSD upgrade failed?

[jbd5010]

I recently purchased a couple of excellent condition JVC SR-DVM600 MiniDV/DVD/HDD recorders for very cheap locally on FB Marketplace. I tested both and they worked 100%. I removed the 40GB IDE hard drive from one of them, created an image using HDD Raw Copy Tool and then wrote that image to a 128GB SSD. I connected an IDE-to-SATA converter to the unit and installed my SSD. Upon plugging in the power, the unit was unresponsive and I was getting a chirp once per second or so from the switching power supply, suggesting it was overloading, shutting itself down, and attempting to power itself up again repeatedly. After putting the original HDD back in, I found that it wouldn't power back up in its original configuration and I had apparently done some actual damage.

Has anyone attempted such an upgrade? I know jwillis84 upgraded his JVC DR-MX1, but he did so with another IDE drive and no adapter/converter.

My next task is to diagnose the switching power supply. Not sure why the IDE adapter would have fried it, though.

[aramkolt]

Hmm. That's odd that that it now won't boot off of your IDE drive.... Not sure what to say about it not working with the original though since if it doesn't work with that, then I don't think you can expect it to with a replacement drive either.

If you can get it going again, You might try doing a compact flash adapter to IDE, those were somewhat common back in the day and they contain zero conversion circuitry on the boards since I guess compact flash must basically be like an IDE drive pinout wise already, just with a different connector:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/135112067967

[latreche34]

It could be an isolated incident and was going to fail anyway due to age with bad power supply caps, I would try powering up and down the other unit several times to see if it behaves the same way, If not try the SSD on it. It doesn't make any sense that the hard drive would damage the power supply unless the adapter is one of those chinese knock-offs, I would not attempt to use it again, Get a good adapter. The assembling and soldier work quality on those is very very poor.

[lordsmurf]

This may be a caps issue. Understand I'm not saying that in the flippant sort of way that "it's the caps" is now (vastly overdone), but as a legitimate troubleshoot. In this exact case, that is likely. When you screw around with the internals of these old components, especially with any modification (with even a 1% power draw difference), it can be "game over". It's enough to tip the unit from functioning to non-functioning.

Just hope that's all it is. The alternatives are all worse, you bricked it. So you'd better hope it's just caps.

[jbd5010]

So I did more troubleshooting, including installing a known good power supply board from another unit. The hard drive and optical drive spin up when I plug the unit in, and the Mini DV deck clicks indicating the motors receive power as well. But, the cooling fan does not turn on and there are no lights on the front display. Unfortunately, I think I bricked the main system control processor IC, rather than the power supply ��

[aramkolt]

Hmm. I was thinking of attempting upgrade to an SD card with a Toshiba HDD recorder. Seems like there's a lot of things that can go wrong, but supposedly it's possible. The possibility of bricking a unit like that has me a little hesitant to attempt now though. Definitely is a shame that happened to yours

[jbd5010]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

The possibility of bricking a unit like that has me a little hesitant to attempt now though. Definitely is a shame that happened to yours

I used a cheapo Amazon adapter, rather than something more reputable like Startech, that may have been my problem...

[aramkolt]

Other question would be whether you know for sure that HDD raw copy has been known to work for others? I was thinking of using clonezilla when attempting mine, but I also don't know if that is the preferred method.

[jbd5010]

I believe jwillis used it on the MX1 I mentioned further up the thread, but I'm not positive if trying to write the image from a spinning HDD to solid state/flash memory will cause issues... Sectors not lining up etc.

[aramkolt]

Sooo I spent quite a bit of time trying to use various cloning tools on the Toshiba machine. The original drive seems to work fine in the player, I get about 12% through the drive with HDD raw copy and it starts running into a bunch of errors with every block it gets to and then pauses for 30 seconds before getting to the next error. Supposedly it is supposed to know how to skip read errors, but seems like it really doesn't.

I don't really know what I'm doing, but I from what I'm reading, ddrescue is probably my last hope here unless someone has an RD-XS55 or XS35 image they can send me that they got from HDD Raw Copy. I'm not totally sure that the read errors aren't some sort of anti copy feature that Toshiba might have put in the drive. The fact that Jwillis84 was able to copy his using that method makes me think not though.

Clonezilla seemed promising, but apparently it does not work if it can't detect partitions or the file tree - so that's not really a "raw" tool where it just reads what's there and saves it without needing to at least understand some of what it is writing.

[jbd5010]

I only have a Toshiba XS32 and XS34, but I can try to get images from their HDDs in case one might work with an XS-35 if you want.

Do the higher numbered RD-XS units also have LSI chips?

[aramkolt]

I'm not sure if this one has the LSI chip or not, there's one chip that has an epoxied heatsink, but that's probably the processor. See picture below of the main board. I did also fully recap that board since it has a fair number of SMTs, some of which were completely open circuit.
IMG_6193.jpg

This thread seems to suggest it has an NEC chip though, also noted by Jwillis84.
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/tos...840132/page-24

They do also reference a TBC and interestingly also that the same series of NEC chips was used in the ADVC line of DV converters which explains why I'm also pretty sure those act like line-TBC's at least to some degree. I've never seen flagging on a first generation tape that others have converted with an ADVC box or really even though Sony cameras either, but I haven't done my own testing yet. I've got the perfect SLV-R1000 that flags with everything, so if it'll correct that, color me convinced.

I was crossing my fingers - but I saw the same slowdown and errors at 12% on this drive with ddrescue. At least with DDrescue, it gives some statistics to look at so you don't just wonder if the system is hanging. I suspect that HDD Raw Copy is likely just as fast and probably would have worked, I just didn't give it enough time to get through the bad section which seemed like 15 minutes by itself.

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If the cloned drive does work, I'll copy from that to a file using HDD Raw Copy since the new drive shouldn't have read errors. I'd share the file, but I think the file will end up being something like 250GB and even if I can later compress it, not sure how much smaller it'll be. Most likely much too large for my free dropbox.

HDD Raw copy is also less risky because you don't have to reference a drive letter alone, so if you pick the source drive as the target drive by mistake, you'll overwrite your original drive and that'll be the end.

IMG_6194.jpg

But on that note, I happened to see that the first post here suggests you can plug in many old IDE hard drives and just format it using the machine's menus:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/tos...p-info.840132/

.....so could be all of this effort is beyond unnecessary and I just wasn't aware. Since I'm into this hours-long cloning process, I'm not going to stop it now to test, but I might try it with a different SD card that I'll have to obtain first. Not sure why Jwillis would make a post about using HDD Raw Copy if he could have just formatted through the menu, unless that's how you get around to using non-supported drives perhaps.

I assume the HD Raw Copy thing should work with the JVCs too unless they are picky about a drive's device ID or something.

That forum post does also talk about boot failures after a drive swap, so my guess is there's some sort of button combo to reset the JVC also and that might bring your machine back to life, at least with the original drive.

[aramkolt]

So figured that was too easy (still took many hours haha) AND didn't end up working. Got some more read errors in the end:

IMG_6195.jpg

99.99% of the drive was able to be copied with that method, but but I guess after looking at some more forum posts, SD card might need to be SDHC instead of SDXC - maybe. Also might be limited to 128GB possibly. Others have said they haven't gotten SDHC working either, so hard to say what's actually needed.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/tos...e-hdd.3059544/

Jwillis84 also talks about how SD or CF could prematurely fail due to no wear leveling, though I'm not sure how much of the same area would get written for a HDD recorder. Seems like it'd be mostly linear writes rather than rewriting the same area over and over unless you delete each recording right after you make it for the next one possibly, but I'm not really an expert on that.

Not all too surprising, but seems one needs very specific hardware when doing a solid state type drive update on most of these older machines and the details about what works are kind of light. Jwillis84 seems to have had the most success at least with the Toshibas, but not quite enough detail for me to reproduce his results as of yet anyway.

He even mentions M.2 SATA drive adapters, but sounds like you'd also need a 44 pin to 40 pin adapter and those aren't particularly any more removable than IDE drives since they are held into the adapters by screws and use pretty delicate connectors.

Also seems like the "copying the old drive" method is pointless for the Toshibas anyway which can just format blank drives on their own apparently - not that I've gotten that far haha. Need to find a solid state drive combo that it will boot with first.

Just for the extreme curiosity, I'll probably give compact flash and maybe a different SD card a go. I'd really like to have a small/removable format (like SD or CF) so that it's easy to pop out the drive and transfer to PC without having to remove the top or mess with IDE connectors that will wear out over time.

[jbd5010]

If there's a way for JVCs to format a fresh HDD in the machine itself, it probably requires a JIG RCU or a firmware disc and Service Advisor, or both. I know there are such discs floating around VideoHelp for PAL/European JVC DVD recorders, but as far as I know none for NTSC.

I tried using a CF card to IDE adapter with the HDD image from a working DR-MX1 flashed to it, and it just sat there with the loading message. Putting the HDD back in and it was back to normal function. So, I may have bricked the DVM600 for nothing, these machines may not work with anything but a mechanical HDD... Haven't tried an SD card adapter yet, but I have one.

[aramkolt]

If it's just a JIG RCU that is needed, there was a different user that posted about how to use non-JIG RCU remotes as JIG RCU remotes and they are available for something like $30-$50.

If someone has the process for how to tell the player to format it with the JIG RCU, I'd be willing to try to obtain one of those DVM units and try it.

I've got a CF adapter and a CF card on the way to try with the Toshiba, but I also kind of wonder if the type of memory they have matters as the new cards probably use something a little different, but I guess we'll see. I also got an IDE to SATA adapter to try as well. I figure with a SATA drive, those are easy enough to plug in and unplug from a connector that I'd still consider a SATA drive removable media and could probably 3D print a cradle that sticks out the side kind of how Blackmagic recorders just have openings to hot swap SATA drives - if it works. Just seems like a lot of frustration so far and jumping over what seem like a bunch of hurdles to not actually get anywhere just yet. But that makes me want it to work more, especially since other people have gotten it to work.

Ironically, unless this turns out to be far superior to other comprised capture methods, I probably won't even use it much after I get that working, it's more about the "challenge" at this point.

Too bad there's not a good way to spoof a device ID or whatever these things use to determine if a supported drive is connected or not.

[jbd5010]

Update! I was able to get a Startech SATA to IDE adapter and a generic SD card to IDE adapter both to work on a DR-MX1, including existing recordings on the HDD that I copied remaining intact and playable. So my initial failure on the DVM unit appears to be due to a bad SATA/IDE adapter (or some error on my part not properly seating ribbon connectors etc.) Like you said, this was more for fun as I'd be surprised if the LSI filtering capabilities are worth the hassle of getting the captured video off the unit afterwards...

[aramkolt]

That's awesome! In both cases, did you have to write the old disk image to the card first, or did it just let you format it as a blank drive? Sounds like on the SD card you did copy a disk image, but I'm wondering if it also works with blank cards? Can you post pictures of the specific adapters used as well as the specific SD card/SATA drive used?

Any chance you could try the same in your XS34 that you mentioned you have?

Jwillis84's post really did seem to suggest that an IDE to SD adapter would work with the XS54/34 with what appears to be basically the same generic adapter I obtained, though I guess after 3 years, it's possible that the chipsets changed or vary. Other forum posts suggest that the 55 and 54 basically will take the same drives, so I don't think that's the issue. I did have a startech to SATA adapter already on the way before I saw your post, so if that also doesn't work, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas beyond the CF card which I agree with Jwillis84 isn't as ideal as a SATA drive and as a bonus they are also less expensive.

[jbd5010]

In both cases, I used HDD Raw Copy to write the imgc file to the SSD and SD card first. I believe from past reading, and from the behavior of the units, that they rely on the hard drive for their operating system. A blank HDD just gives you the infinite "loading" behavior. Here are the adapters used:

SATA adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOJNGC2
SD Card adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SK28S2Y

SD Card used (shouldn't matter): https://www.amazon.com/Lexar-Profess...07NLY7N7L?th=1

SSD used (shouldn't matter): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCLJCMR8

I'll give it a shot with my XS34 this evening and let you know...

[aramkolt]

Much appreciated!

I bought the same SATA adapter (yet to arrive) as well as have been using the same SD card adapter. I know on the Toshibas, the hard drive must not contain the operating system since it is pretty well known that they can format a blank drive, though I'm not sure what determines for the machine if it'll continue booting after seeing a certain blank drive or drive controller.

Could also be that my model is just more picky than earlier ones due to whatever firmware happens to be on it, but I think my best shot is for the SATA adapter to hopefully work and I'll post back if it does or doesn't.

Looking forward too seeing if the XS34 will work with a blank SATA drive or the SD card adapter for you - and if it does, I might have to look at just using one of those for the project.

[aramkolt]

SATA adapter arrived today and it works! Seems like that should be the go to conversion for any of these older HDD recorders. I do wonder if it has something to do with being able to set the identifier jumper. On the XS55, it is "CS" which is cable select. Other versions of some DVD recorders may have been set to "Master" instead - I have no idea what the cheap generic SD to IDE cards have internally set, so could be that's why they worked with some other models and not this one - maybe.

Now to work on a mod that makes it so the hard drive can be pulled out without opening the top case! Then I can call the project finished. Guess all that is left after that is to see how user-friendly ISObuster is.

Easiest way to do such a mod should be just using a SATA extension cable and mounting the drive outside the case, but I might try something a little fancier first.