Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 4:11 AM |
tempest |
Hello all, I recently started having trouble with my combo USB1.1/Firewire PCI card in my Sonnet 800MHz G4-upgraded 8500. I tried switching it with another USB1.1/Firewire PCI card to no avail. Firewire drive (FireFly from SmartDisk) would mount but whenever I try copying a large 5+ MB files over, it would wedge the whole system. If I copy smaller files but try to delete and empty the trash, it would also wedge the whole system. No problems under OS 9.2.2. Disabled L2/L3 cache, same thing. Installing PowerLogix's cache utility does not help and I cannot set speculative addressing with the Sonnet installed via PLX's utility. Replaced G4 with G3, works fine. I purchased an Adaptec DuoConnect USB2.0/Firewire PCI card (AUA-3020) and this fixed the problem. This adapter, unlike the AUA-3121, does not have a molex power recepticle for power input. It also does not support deep sleep under 9.x. Its documentation says it is deep-sleep compatible under 10.1.3 and above, but I never put my 8500 to sleep. |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
April, 28, 2003 1:55 PM |
Michael.Felsmann |
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I was just about to post a similar message: problems with an inexpensive FireWire/USB combo card. Works perfectly under OS9. I mainly use the FireWire part with my Yamaha F1 CDRW and Toast, my son sometimes connects a USB game pad. Tried under X with Toast and MissingMediaBurner (no overburning/90min. CD-Rs in Toast): NO GO. All this is on a 9600/Sonnet G4/700 using Sonnet's cache software version 1.2.6. Then I tried my old G3/500 card (not changing a bit of software): Toast still saw an "unstable connection", but I was able to fill two 90 minute CD-Rs completely with data using MMB. So the processor type IS a factor here, and as of now there is no piece of software to fix this. On a side note, going from 10.2.4 to 10.2.5 brought further FW probs, so I reversed that step. What's really annoying me quite a bit is that quite a number of peripherals do only work in OS9. (The USB game pad was in no case even "seen" at all by Jaguar!) And that happens on modern Macs, as well. Apple often blames non-standard behaviour of components. That may be perfectly true - but why doesn't stuff work in X of which Apple already knew how to handle in older days? (sigh!) Mike |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
April, 28, 2003 12:22 PM |
OSXGuru |
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Ah, very interesting. I had also been noticing that some Firewire cards seemed to have intermittent problems with the older systems in Mac OS X, but hadn't tracked it down yet. If the problem is G4 related, then that is an important clue. I will try to reproduce your results. If I see the same thing, then it is possible that tweaking the G4 CPU settings will help (i.e. speculative access, and one or two other things). It would be nice to get this fixed. |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 7:41 PM |
tempest |
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You can search for "pci vendor list" via Google and there are pages where they have the IDs listed and who the companies are. Use those sites along with what either Apple System Profiler or ioreg shows as the vendor and device id to get a better idea who manufacturers the chipset. It's not normal to list chip manufacturer and I found it interesting that Orange Micro did that. |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 5:50 PM |
powderhaus |
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I have been looking around for what chipset is on my Belkin USB1.1.firewire400 card but i cannot find it, belkin has replaced it with a USB 2/firewire card and they don't even list what chipset is on that and i would love to know because i have been have HUGE problems with my Hard drive. Thanks, Jim |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 2:55 PM |
tempest |
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Yeah, my old card's firewire was provided by Lucent. The Adaptec uses TI for firewire. This new card didn't come with USB2.0 drivers for OS X, only Windows. USB2.0 functionality is via an Adaptec chip, 1.1 by NEC. It is interesting that Adaptec's website says PCI 2.2 compliant, but it isn't a problem with older Power Macintoshes. |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 2:44 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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I have the Macally USB1.1/FW combo card in my G4/420 Powerwave and it has always worked perfectly. Although the USB audio didn't work as well as a NEC based USB2 card? This seems to be related to the Opti chip set. Marty |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 1:35 PM |
marcush |
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I had the exact same problem with a CompUSA Firewire/USB1.1 combo card last year. I replaced it with another oem brand card but it developed the same trouble. I ended up with a Ratoc Firewire/USB2.0 combo card that I bought at a premium (the other two were under $50)and it has worked flawlessly for about a year now. The common thing about the two old cards is that they both used Lucent chips which, from what I'd read before getting either were supposed to be preferred. The CompUSA card had a molex connector the other didn't. The Ratoc card has a hard disk power connector. |
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RE: Combo firewire & G4s |
March, 27, 2003 9:28 AM |
egonzales21 |
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I also have noticed problems with certain combo cards. My OrangeMicro USB1.1/FW card had lots of problems with the firewire side. I replaced the firewire side with an Adaptec Firewire card and it works great. Basically it comes down to one thing I believe, the firewire chipset used by the card. I have found that the cards with TI chipsets work best in X on these old world machines. My opinion only. |
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