firewire issues with panther (posted around the web)

20th Jan 2004 20:57 #1

Член

http://www.cooldrives.com/firewireinfo.html

If you purchased your drive before October 31 from Cooldrives/FirewireGear/FirewireMAX/FirewireDirect/GraniteDigital/FWDepot/WiebeTech or anywhere else, unless you are 100% certain the Oxford firmware has been updated to v. 1.05, do not use any FireWire 800 storage products with Macintosh OS X 10.3. It can result in a catastrophic loss of data.
Unlike Elsewhere, Most of our customers did not get affected by this Oxford 922 problem
as we utilize a NEWER/FASTER and BETTER INITIO Chip in most of our Enclosures!

MAC INTIO 2430 FIRWARE UPLOADER
Windows INTIO 2430 FIRWARE UPLOADER
Firmware for Multi-Bay Enclosures (each board must be Flashed individually) Ver. 2.16

Dear Customer,

Recently there has been some reports that FireWire 800 drives based on Oxford Semiconductor's 922 chip may malfunction under OS X 10.3/Panther operating system. Exact nature of the problem has not been clearly identified. We do know that it does not affect every FireWire 800 drive/enclosure, nor every Panther machine. Up until this moment, no one, including Oxford Semiconductors and Apple Computers, has been able to reproduce this problem consistently.

In conferring with Oxford Semiconductors, it is advisable that all 922-based FireWire 800 drives be shipped with the latest firmware available. Currently, that means v. 1.05. According to Oxford Semiconductors, this should prevent the problem from occurring.

To solve the problem, we recommend following steps: Backup all your data now! Upgrade the firmware of your Macpower Product (Oxford 922 chipset only) Always disconnect the external hard drive before shut down/start up of Mac OS 10.3 Only connect the external drive after the system has booted up Do not connect any external drives when installing the new OS 10.3 Check for OS upgrades frequently Firmware Upgrade

To see what firmware version is used on your device and to upload the latest version, we have prepared an updater utility for Mac and PC. A few points before downloading this utility:

Upgrade has to be done via Firewire, 1394a (9-6pin cable) or 1394b (Firewire 800) connections are both OK. Hard Drive does not have to be connected, bridge board and power supply is sufficient for the firmware upgrade. If you already have v1.04 and everything works as expected but you wonder if you should upgrade to v1.05 or not, we recommend not to change anything, therefore preventing any problems which could be caused by an upgrade or a void warranty. Follow the installation instructions on the Readme file after you have downloaded the file below.
If you have a MACPOWER ICE OXFORD 922 ENCLOSURE Mac OS 10.2.8 --> '922_updater_Mac.sit' PC WinXP --> '922_updater_PC.zip'

IF YOU HAVE A BLACK ICE OXFORD 922 ENCLOSURE PLEASE GET THESE FILESOX922 UTILITY for NEWMOTION
UTILITY UPDATE TUTORIAL

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems." - Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

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20th Jan 2004 21:50 #2

galactica

Member

correct me if I am wrong.. but its already been covered

My Mac Video Website

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21st Jan 2004 10:39 #3

willrob

Member

While I have enothing to add to the Firewire 800 saga (my dual G4 has firewire 400), I will toss this tip out there for who ever might need it.

Yesterday I assembled an external Firewire drive (A Seagate 200G drive I got at CompUSA for $100 after rebate, and a $40 external case). I thought I knew what I was doing when I set the jumper on the drive to "Cable Select" (the three internal drives I added to the G4 worked fine with that jumper setting).

The drive appeared on the desktop; I used Disk Utility to format it; tried copying a test file to it and my system locked up. After poking around on the net for a while I discovered that external firewire drives need to be set to "Master." Once I switched the jumper, everthing was good. I also upgraded the Oxford Bridge firmware to the most current version. Panther is purring...

william