INFRA Signal 509
LLM-assisted reverse engineering attempts replacement macOS driver for orphaned Drobo 5D after vendor liquidation
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Illustration only Photo by Albert Stoynov on Unsplash
A developer documented their attempt to use Claude to reverse-engineer a replacement macOS driver for a Drobo 5D RAID array, after Drobo's 2023 liquidation left the hardware without software support on future macOS versions.
When hardware vendors go out of business, their orphaned devices become e-waste unless someone reverse-engineers replacement software. This project tests whether LLMs can meaningfully assist with that reverse-engineering work, which could change how the engineering community approaches abandoned hardware.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Drobo entered liquidation in 2023, and its Dashboard software will become incompatible with macOS after version 27 drops Rosetta 2 support.
The Drobo 5D still mounts as an external drive on newer macOS but reports incorrect volume sizes and provides no array status information.
SCSITaskUserClient does not work for the Drobo on newer Macs, as IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService returns kIOReturnUnsupported.
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