NEC 3520A won't power up in Firewire enclosure -- help!

[tbessie]

I just got my NEC 3520A DVD writer from NewEgg, as so many here have, and placed it in my Firewire/USB-2 enclosure, which works with my old Plextor CD writer.

Well, after connecting everything up, it didn't power up!

So I fiddled with it a bit, and found that when I disconnected the enclosure's internal IDE cable, it powered up just fine. When I reconnected the IDE cable, it powered down.

I've never seen anything like this before! Does anybody know what may be causing this? There are no jumpers in the enclosure, and I tried CS, Master and Slave for the drive itself, but it made no difference.

This seems really bizarre...

- Tim

[steve2713]

Try replacing the IDE cable?

[tbessie]

I might think of doing that, except that it works fine with the CD writer. I removed the new drive and put the old one back, and it works fine. So it's not the cable, but something having to do with the drive's IDE interface, I'd think... dunno. I wrote the people I bought the enclosure from, and NEC as well -- hopefully, some useful info will come my way. I suspect they'll say "send it back".

[steve2713]

It's still possible it's the cable. There is what is known as a 40 conductor and 80 conductor cables. The latter is used for faster data transfer and may solve your problem. The 40 cables are a typically a heavier gauged cable vs. the 80 cable. Your HD(s) and/or internal optical drives may be using the 80 cable, you should be able to notice the difference between the two. Maybe you could remove one temporarily to try it with your enclosure to see if it solves your problem.

If a 80 conductor cable doesn't help, your enclosure chipset probably doesn't support DVD burners.

[ccbadd]

What chipset is the enclosure? Take a look at this thread for some additional help: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=119149

[tbessie]

It's Oxford 911.

- Tim

[tbessie]

Hooray! The guy I bought the enclosure from suggested I upgrade the firmware and change some of the firmware configuration settings.

Unfortunately, the firmware upgrade utility couldn't see the damn enclosure.

However, when I tried it on a different computer, the upgrade utility saw it, so I upgraded, and right now I'm burning my first DL DVD on the drive.

Hooray!

Thanks for everyone's suggestions... it ended up being something as simple as firmware. Sure hope the drive wasn't damaged by bad pinouts, though, from the first time I hooked it up!

- Tim