iBook won't recognize Datoptic Firewire Bridge Board

[DavidLeblond]

I got this ide to firewire adapter (http://www.datoptic.com/fwint.html) and stuck it in my PC so that I could use my PC's DVD drive on my iBook G4 (with Panther.) However when I hook it up to my iBook, nothing happens. I can go into System Profiler and see that a "Firewire device" is hooked up but that is all. I can't find any drivers for it. Has anyone had any luck using this?

[Makosuke]

Well... assuming the one you got isn't broken and you hooked it up right, I can think of two possibilities offhand:

1) It uses some sort of funky bridge chip (they don't seem to identify which one on that page) that isn't quite compliant with the standard, and so your Mac doesn't want to recognize it.

2) Your PC drive doesn't have a format your Mac recognizes. I don't seem to remember the MacOS recognizing NTFS, but I might be wrong about that. Easy to check, though: go to Disk Utility and see if anything shows up in the lefthand collumn; if the disk is there (and you have the option of formatting it), then the Mac just doesn't recognize the format. Otherwise, no luck there.

[DavidLeblond]

Update:

The Mac now recognizes the DVD+RW drive. I can read the CD and DVDs from it.

But now it won't write to it. In System Profiler it says (under Firewire Devices):

CD Burning: Not supported

[cpjakes]

That just means that Apple software won't support it. Toast probably will.

[Makosuke]

Originally posted by cpjakes
That just means that Apple software won't support it. Toast probably will. Yep. Over at xlr8yourmac.com they have an extensive database of what drives are and are compatible with what. Toast, fortunately, handles just about anything.

You might also be able to find a hacked driver to make the drive Apple burning (Finder, iTunes) compatible, though. Again, try xlr8yourmac.