unibody MacBook SATA to FIREWIRE? Serious question.

[California]

http://www.datoptic.com/cgi-bin/web.cgi?product=IF8UC-S&detail=yes

This is a SATA to firewire 800 and USB bridge.

Can anyone give me a good reason why this would not work (through jerryrigged wires of course) through the SATA connector inside a unibody Macbook's optical SATA interface?

I want the cheaper white Unibody because I like the screen better but cannot live without FIREWIRE. I need to boot off my laptop drive.

There is also this converter. http://www.cooldrives.com/satofimiad2x.html

I don't see why, if I pull out the optical drive, why I can't run firewire through the SATA port...

Does anyone know about this?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

It won't work because it's "one-way". It adapts SATA devices to work on a USB or FireWire bus. It does not allow a FireWire device to run over the SATA bus.

To use a bad car analogy: Making a standard gasoline car use ethanol isn't very difficult. Making a vehicle designed specifically for ethanol run gasoline is entirely different. The one-way conversion doesn't apply both ways.

Those devices are made so that they take "SATA HDD" speak, and convert it to "FW HDD" speak. It expects a "device", not a "host" on the SATA end, and a host, not a device, on the FW end. If you were to plug it in to a SATA host, and a FW device, the SATA end would send signals to your computer going "HEY! What kind of drive are you?!?!" To which your computer would reply.... Nothing. Because SATA isn't meant to work that way. (FireWire actually *IS* meant to work that way, but since SATA isn't, it's moot.)

 

[California]

Without firewire, I'll stick to my iBook G4 last revision. Those glass screens on the aluminim macbooks are barely tolerable and the white unibody screens seem easier to read...

thanks for the info, it made good sense.