I've got a B&W G3 that's pretty good (for me, anyway) that I've stuffed a DVD writer in. However, I've got a spare Sony Spressa CD-RW in an external Firewire case I'd like to use for external drives, etc. The Sony works fine, but I cannot get the Mac to recognize anything else in the case. My spare DVD+RW drive worked once (no + media to hand, but it would read CDs and DVDs), but after messing about a while with some hard drives I would really like to pull some data off of, it no longer works -- recognizes a disk, but the G3 reports "firewire 400 device" instead of the correct model, etc, and nothing shows up on the desktop.
Is this a problem with the enclosure, or have I fried everything? I'm willing to buy (or scrounge) a firewire or USB enclosure -- it would be nice to have two DVD drives (for coping things) and access to some extra hard drives.
Thanks!
Peter
Yeah, you mighta fried it. I've got a pair of those Spressa drives, swapped in 'em both faster/better optical mechanisms and they work great. The FW/ATAPI bridge Sony used definitely doesn't support HDs though, so whatever you did you might have fubared it but good.
But I'm confused, you say the original Sony mechanism still works?
dan k
Yup, original sony drive works fine. Nothing else, though. Guess I gotta find another enclosure.
Note that the original drive is just a CD-RW and I've been trying to get a DVD+RW to work in there (along with about six hard drives -- they multiply like rabbits!).
I gotta laught, though -- the thought of 4.7G of data on a plastic disk is so far beyond that old Apple II clone with a pair of 360k floppies it's hard to believe!
Peter
I've got a Pioneer 107 in one of mine. Have you tried the different Master/Slave jumper settings? Might just need to be configured properly.
They're nice cases, shame to toss it onto the rarely-or-never-used pile.
dan k
No, nothing works in it but the original sony drive (jumpered as master). Just blinks the power lamp at me with my old Apple CD-ROM in there, and ignores the other drives completely. I know at least one works, as it ran just fine in the G3 (but it's an off brand DVD+RW, and it won't use any of the media I have). I have an LG 4040B installed, as I find DVD-RAM pretty handy (if VERY slow) for backups.
I got a cheapy "IDE to USB 2" convertor that plugs into the back of the drive to try out -- a proper enclosure is a bit pricey just to play with. I'd like to get my 160GB Maxtor to work as a USB or Firewire drive, because it is flaky and REALLY needs a low level format to clean off what I believe is bad partition tables.
Oh well, I really don't need to spend any more money on this stuff, the windows in my room need replacing much more than my DVD drive!
Peter