External firewire -- compatibility?

[tomlee59]

I have a collection of old firewire drives (que cd writers, mostly). What issues are there with swapping out the obsolete drives that currently live inside? I'd like to replace the CD writers with either a big HD or a DVD writer. A quick online search doesn't reveal much wisdom. Before I just go ahead and try some experiments, I'd love to learn from those of you who have already done this. Murphy being Murphy, I am sure there are some subtleties just waiting to trip me up...

 

[coius]

if it's IDE, just pop a standard IDE Device in it. I have had a few firewire cases (including a DVD-RW that died (sony) and popped various IDE Devices into it. It's all the same. All they are, are FW400->IDE Bridges. Nothing special. The only thing they really customize is the case and the drive in it perhaps. The board is just a Medium for the device and the Firewire out port. Go ahead. Just don't think it's hot-swappable though. You gotta power it down because it IS ide.

Good luck on your experiments!

 

[tomlee59]

Thanks, coius. That's what I'd been assuming, but I ran across quite a few posts elsewhere describing some problems. But the experiments weren't cleanly described (or carried out), so it wasn't clear if the problem was with the hardware, or with the carbon wetware.

I'll give it a go and see what happens.

And thanks for the advice about not hot-swapping.

 

[MacMan]

I recently swapped out a knackered CDRW drive from a Firewire case and replaced it with a new 160GB IDE hard drive. The drive wouldn't spin up properly (it was intermittant) and I believe that the Firewire enclosure wasn't providing enough power. However I put the hard drive into another external CDRW enclosure and it worked fine.

It will probably be a case of experimenting but certainly it can be done and if everything is IDE then there shouldn't be any interfacing issues.

 

[tomlee59]

Hopefully, I won't encounter power-supply related issues. In priniciple, easy to fix, but in practice, hard to do without some cosmetic impact. But I do have a bench supply that will supply 10 or so amps at 12V, and simultaneously 25 amps at +5. So, I have enough in the room to get the job done.

 

[LCGuy]

If you do have power supply problems, a good way to go IMHO, if you've got the room is to get an old slimline PC, gut everything out of it apart from the PSU (make sure its AT), install your drive, and put the bridge in where the PCI/ISA slots used to be. Should work so long as you have a long enough IDE cable.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

If it's a truly ancient case, it might not support hard drives larger than 120 GB, but it should support any optical drive just fine.

 

[mac-man6]

I had a Lacie drive that had a 120gb limit but it also shipped in the 90's with a 20gb drive. I had a Lacie CD burner that I pulled apart and it ran with a 120GB+ drive and was bootable. Depends on the chipset. I hear great things about Oxford 911 and I trust most of Lacie's equipment. There's no harm in trying.

 

[equill]

Some ifs:

You wish to maintain FireWire connection and to be able to boot from external storage—yes, I know that this is the 68K MLA—make sure that the bridge to internal devices is mediated by an Oxford chip and not a Prolific (which is by far the commonest in gear coming out of Asia).

You wish to be ambitious or innovative or have plain fast transfers, there is up-and-coming eSATA, which relies on not using USB or FireWire interconnection.

de

 

[tomlee59]

Thanks for the tip, equill. That's valuable information. For that and other reasons, I'm hoping that these Que boxen use Oxfords. I'll pop them open this weekend most likely. I've got some dvd burners I'd like to try in them, as I've grown weary of the overly fussy matsushita in my tibook. It's hard to find media that they'll burn consistently at the 8x advertised speed.

 

[tomlee59]

Well, no joy, unfortunately. The Que box uses a mutant chipset (QBP-2) that seems fussy about what IDE device is connected to it. Apparently, not all IDE-Firewire bridges are made equal (big surprise, eh?). It works okay with an old 2x Plextor DVD writer I happen to have, but does not work with the 18x LG DVD writer that I really wanted to use. I borrowed another firewire enclosure with an Oxford 911, and it works with the LG drive just fine, so the drive itself is ok.

Googling about the QBP-2 reveals that I am not alone in this experience. Oh well.

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

You wish to maintain FireWire connection and to be able to boot from external storage—yes, I know that this is the 68K MLA—make sure that the bridge to internal devices is mediated by an Oxford chip and not a Prolific (which is by far the commonest in gear coming out of Asia).

I have 3 enclosures - a 2.5" Oxford911 based one, a Initio-based hard disk case and a 5.25" DVD-RW case with a Prolific chipset. All boot fine. I think you may find only early Prolific chipsets, and maybe older Macs, have that kind of issue - later ones (i.e. from the last 2-3 years) don't AFAIK.

The way to check what chipset is used its to look in the FireWire section in System Profiler when the drive is attached and powered on. There should be a 'Manufacturer' property for the device that tells you the vendor.

 

[equill]

I can't argue with your experience, obviously, but the Zynet Polar external enclosure (FireWire x 2, USB 2.0) that I bought only 3 mo. ago has a Prolific PL-3507 bridge chip, and is not bootable into OS 9.2.2 or 10.3.9 or 10.4.10.

None of my three LaCie d2 drives, spanning 2000-2005 in purchase years, fails to boot a Mac in OS 9 or OS X. How's that for variable mileage? Indeed, of Prolific's five current Storage Device Controllers (sic), only in the case of the flash drive controller/bridge PL-2528 does the notion of booting from an external get a mention, whereas USB Bulk-Only Mass Storage gets many mentions.

After the first disappointment, the Prolific chip's incapacity has mattered little, because I gutted the enclosure and use it in the open now for quick initializations of multiple drives via FireWire, which proceed smoothly. Taking a LaCie apart for the purpose was much less to my taste, on the grounds both of purchase price and ease of take-apart/reassemble.

de