[1394] cooldrives.com FW HD enclosure fails on G4

[jeff chasick]

Apparently cooldrives.com is a total rip off and I wouldn¹t be surprised to
see some lawsuits starting against them..

Unless they are using totally inferior parts, there is no reason why a
firewire bridgeboard would not work on a mac, windows or linux system

Do you know what type of chip is used in the enclosure?

Depending on the chip being used, it is possible that you can flash the
board (if it is an oxford or initio chip)


> 
> I purchased a firewire HD enclosure with removable tray from a
> place called cooldrives.com. The following email that I sent to
> their support explains my problem:
> 
> -------------------------------
> Product: removable tray IEEE-1394 firewire Oxford 911 enclosure for PC and Mac
> users!
> http://www.cooldrives.com/retriefiox91.html
> 
> Problem: works on Windows machines but not on Mac.
> 
> On two Macs, a G4-733 and a G4 dual 533, plugging in the above drive (with
> an existing Mac HD), results in no mounting. This is the case with either OS
> 9.1
> or OS 10.3.1. On both machines, other firewire devices including other
> firewire drives work fine.
> 
> On OS X, choosing about the Mac followed by the More Info...
> button and then selecting firewire from the list first lists the
> Firewire Bus under Device Tree but after plugging in the drive
> and doing a refresh, the profile says No devices found.
> 
> Since I (mistakenly) ordered two enclosures, I tested both with
> the same results.
> 
> 
> **
> 
> Also, On Win2K or WinXP, I have to physically disconnect the cable to
> unmount the drive so that another tray can be recognized. I would have
> expected turning the key to off would have done this.
> -------------------------------
> 
> It has been more than a week and I a haven't heard a beep from them
> and, frankly, suspect I never will.
> 
> I did a bit more testing and found the drive works on a 17" iMac but not
> on another G4 we have. So somehow this drive just doesn't work on
> G4s. 
> 
> Anybody know why or if there is a fix?
> 
> Can anyone recommend a similar enclosure where different IDE drives
> can be easily swapped in and out?
> 
> 
> Larry Hutchinson
> WaveMetrics
> 
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