Re: PCI FIREWIRE PROBLEM WITH 8500/200 - any help? (OrangeMicro FireWire PCI)

["Simon Biber" <xbiber@bigpond.net.au>]

This message wasn't crossposted. If you must send a message to multiple
groups, please have the courtesy to do a proper cross-post in which all
groups are mentioned in the Newsgroups field of a single message.

As far as I can tell, nothing in your message was relevant to this newsgroup
(comp.sys.apple2).

You are talking about the Macintosh computer, which should go in one of the
comp.sys.mac groups.

Simon.

"IDinnitDuit" <brave@new.world> wrote in message
news:190420011621075920%brave@new.world...
> Sorry 'bout the crosspost, but it's relavent...
>
> Do any of you who happen across this message also happen to have a
> PowerMac 8500 (specifically an 8500 - not an 8100 or 8600, etc, but
> MAYBE a 7500) that's successfully using some sort of Firewire
> interface? I know it's a shot in the dark, but I'd like to know what
> kind of card you're using for the FireWire ports. The only [supposedly]
> compatible card I could find locally was the OrangeMicro FireWire PCI
> Board, but apparently my machine is the hidden asterisk in the
> compatibility list. So before I take a big crapshoot and try to guess
> which of the cards I'll have to order online would be the best
> alternative involving the least amount of return-postage, I figured I'd
> see if anyone here might have had better luck with any other particular
> Firewire stuff on an 8500.
>
> The only FireWire device I'm using is a 7200RPM IDE drive in a case
> made by MadLogix, but I had the exact same problem with a
> fresh-off-o'-Fry's shelf Maxtor IDE/Firewire rig before that. Not to
> mention that I had 99.999% success when using either drive on my
> B&W/300. Both drives were bought brand new by me and yes I have already
> done all of the stuff I could/should do with extensions, PRAM, magic
> fairy dust, etc.
>
> Well... that is... all i should do except perhaps for that one thing
> I'm not thinking of.
>
>
> Oh, and if you're wondering about what's actually wrong, it's that when
> I try to copy something, even relatively small, from the FW drive to
> the 8500's internal SCSI (two Fast Wide Fujitsus striped together) the
> data gets corrupted somewhere along the bus. If the file's fairly
> large, the copy will fail with an unknown disk error. If it's small, it
> might complete the copy sans errors, but the new data will be unusable.
> Also, when I try to launch an app from the drive, well... take your
> pick. Sometimes it hangs hard, sometimes I can Cmd-Pwr or force quit
> out, sometimes I'll get far enough to see a program's splash screen
> blow technicolor chunks all over itself. Note that as often as those
> things occured, the data still on the Firewire drive was always tip-top
> as it flowed over the G3's Firewire bus
>
> Actually, when I cut the drive's throughput in half, it seemed to
> perform a slight bit better (faster) on the G3, and a bit worse
> (quicker discos, more erratic processor stalling, etc) on the 8500.
> hmm... digital negative feedback. are the redundent cycles becoming
> redundent cycles? Anyway, i'm guessing that something's not able to
> hold the lid down on my bitbucket well enough and my bits are spilling
> out all over the inside my cpu case. If anyone knows of a halfway
> decent Firewire interface that can consistantly play nice with an 8500
> without springing leaks everywhere, I'd love to know about it.
>
>
> thanx.