The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

Well,

I've done it. I've gone and ripped the guts out of my G.

Okay, I replaced the hard drive with another (slightly) bigger one. I did not want to get really crazy so I just bought a 30 GB Hitachi drive that was a very close sister of the 20 GB one that came stock. The drive was used because the stock Yamaha (Hitachi) drive unit is a few years old and I'm a cheap bastard! (that's why I love my G)

Anyway, I suppose I should have tested the new drive first (duh) but I went ahead and installed it. That part seemed to go okay. I have some photos that I will forward when I get to work on monday (my home system doesn't have my camera software installed) showing the relatively simple and quite painless dissection procedure. Only about 10 screws have to be removed plus the screws that hold in the CDRW drive. So if you have removed more fasteners than that (or if you have taken ANY of the knobs off of the front) put your G back together! You are on the wrong track.

When I turned it on it fired up and gave me the typical boot screen followed by a blank screen displayed the following:

RECOVERY FIRM OS IS BROKEN.
PLEASE INSERT AW16G UPDATE CD-ROM.
CONTINUE: ENTER

update I didn't know you could update... Nice to know Yamaha built updatability in to the G...

I figured the CD that came with it might work, but when I put it in and pressed enter, it said:

LOADING OS FROM CD-ROM
ERRROR CAN'T LOAD OS FILE
PLEASE TURN OFF.

So that is where I am now. I think what is to be done next is to try and attach both drives to my computer as additional drives and try to clone the old one to the new one. Hopefully I will be able to transfer data using some kind of machine level copying program (I doubt Windows Explorer will work, but I might try that first) and see if I can't get an OS on the new drive. Then I'll reformat the new drive using the G.

I don't see why this wouldn't work unless Yamaha has coded some sort of chipset check into their OS to prevent this sort of thing. They may prefer you to go buy a 2816 or 4416 if you want to upgrade your system.

I checked their website and it claims that you cannot upgrade the drive at all, but they also told me that you can't replace the "proprietary" CD-ROM and I did that last week without any problems at all.

I figure that if hackers have figured out how to run Linux on an XBox, it shouldn't be impossible to get the G to recognize a larger hard drive.
I have a Boss BR-8 that I used to use before I got the G that came with a 100 MB Zip drive that was EASILY converted into a 250 MB drive and all of the space was available.

If anybody has any other ideas please offer some input!

Until then I'll be pondering my next move...

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No encounter with the mentally ill is enlightening for them or beneficial for you...

Never sleep with a crazy chick.

Don't use the windows explorer to transfer files from disc to disc. You may want to use drive imaging software, like Ghost. Make sure to choose "disc to file" (as opposed to "partition to image") to put the image on your PC. Then, use "image to disc" to put it back to the new drive. Another advantage is you don't have to have both drives connected to your PC in the same time.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

It has been done. Has the new drive been low level formatted? This topic came up on the 4416 forum. It may or pertain to what you are doing.

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

My guess is that there basic information in the ROM sends the "G" to the HD to look for some specific code in a special boot sector. Since all the start up info can't be stored in the chip set.

Even using ghost, you probably won't be able to see what's on that slice of disk. Or, at least if I were doing the development, that's how I would do it.

It would probably be easier to request the Update CD from Yamaha directly.

There's probably a capability to load from CD built in where the drive will be set up properly.

Just my opinion...

Cin

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"I'm not trying to play guitar, I'm trying to make music." - Michael Hedges.