Firewire and the s900 - A pilgrim's progress (part 2) So far, I still had the old Apple Firewire card in the s900. It was when I tried to plug in the drive and have it "recognized" that I realized the Apple card was unusable. So I set out to find another card.
Being the cheapskate that I am, I went on Ebay to look for a low-end generic Firewire-only card. I already have a USB card installed, and was mindful of the fact that "multifunction" Firewire/USB cards (at least _some_ of them) are less likely to work in the s900's 4 "lower slots" (my top two slots were already filled with a VST Ultratek card and Ultimate Rez card, neither of which seemed to behave in the lower slots). As an aside, I believe that Sonnet claims that _their_ Firewire/USB/ATA card is compatible with the s900/j700 series. Perhaps others in this forum who are succesfully using "combo cards" in s900's and j700's would report as to which card brands are working for them, particularly if the card is seated in one of the "lower slots" on either the s900 or j700. Here's a link to locate Firewire PCI cards on Ebay: <http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&query=pci&categoryid=&ht=1&category3=31493&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&BasicSearch=++&from=R2&catref=C3> The card I eventually ended up with has 3 ports. Be aware that some cards also have an internal port, and in addition, some have an internal power connector to which you can hook a hard drive power cable to add "bus power". My card doesn't have the internal power connector, but I find that -- using a small laptop type hard drive -- there is sufficient bus power to run the drive, anyway. Chances are, if you daisy-chain more than one of these, or connect a 3.5" type hard drive, you're going to need an external power connector or powered hub to make up for the lack of bus power from the card itself. By the way, the card I have is a totally generic white-boxed PCI Firewire card. The instructions that came with it make no mention of "Macintosh", at all. But -- with the right extensions (next subject) -- it worked without a hitch. With the drive together and the card installed, I had the hardware end of things taken care of. But actually, I found the most challenging task was locating the correct software to use. The last downloadable "Firewire Specific" version of Apple's Firewire drivers can be found in this directory: <http://apple.doit.wisc.edu/Apple_Support_Area/System_Software_Updates/FireWire/> Here is a _direct download_ link for the Firewire 2.5 files: <http://apple.doit.wisc.edu/Apple_Support_Area/System_Software_Updates/FireWire/FireWire_2.5.sit> Be aware that if you download verion 2.5, and try to these extensions to OS 8.6, you will get an alert that it requires OS 9 to run. The "workaround" is to use the "Tomeviewer" utility to open the Installation Tome, and then "manually extract" the required files and place them into your Extensions folder. The files needed to get a hard drive up and running are: Firewire Enabler Firewire Support There is an additional file called "Firewire Cardbus Enabler", but I found that this wasn't needed, at least for hard drives. Having said that, I'm currently using version 2.8.5 of the Apple Firewire extensions. Unfortunately, to get these, you must download the entire OS 9.2.2 updater utility (about 31mb), and then extract them manually using Tomeviewer. However, even these work fine with OS 8.6. With "Firewire Enabler" and "Firewire Support" active, when you first connect a yet-to-be-initialized Firewire hard drive, the Finder should present you with a dialog telling you the disk is unreadable, and offering you the option of initializing it in either HFS or HFS+ format. Although I have previously stuck with original HFS for initializing my disks, I realized that any Mac that is going to be able to support Firewire is also going to support HFS+, so that is the preferable option to choose in order to save disk space. All the Finder will do is let you initialize the Firewire Drive. I was looking for a utility that offers more options. It turns out these can be harder to track down, unless you want to pay for a "commercial" package. After downloading several utilities (that didn't run or wouldn't recognize my drive), I found something called "Disk Control" by El Gato Software. It is freely downloadable from at least one site. Go to this page to find it: <http://www.synchrotech.com/support/faq-ultifire-01.html> Here is a direct download link: <http://www.synchrotech.com/support-download/diskcontrol1.1.smi.bin> When you first run Disk Control, it will install one addtional extension called "Disk Support" into your extensions folder before it will recognize and handle your drive. Reboot, launch Disk Control, and it will then offer you options for either "quick formatting" (essentially the same option you get from The Finder), or customized initialization with multiple partitions, etc. You can also run speed tests on the disk. I also searched for "diagnostic" software for the Firewire bus. I sense (from searching vainly) that there are very few Firewire utility applicatons "out there". I was hoping to find a Firewire equivalent to the useful "SCSI Probe" utility. The closest I came -- indeed the _only_ Firewire diagnostic software I was able to locate -- is called "Firewire Troubleshooter" from Indigita.com: <http://www.indigita.com> Download page: <http://www.indigita.com/support/files/index.html#/FireWire/Mac OS 9> Direct download link for "Firewire Troubleshooter": <http://www.indigita.com/support/files/FireWire/Mac%20OS%209/FireWire_Trouble_Shooter-4.sit> Hopefully, I've presented enough information so that anyone considering Firewire has enough to get started... Regards, - John -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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