External FIrewire 3.5" harddrive enclosures

Since you didn't mention a specific enclosure, I can only comment in general...

The only part of the enclosure that is of concern is the firewire bridge board. As long as the bridge board meets the requirements for firewire (or IEEE-1394), The it is for all intents and purposes, OS neutral.

On your Mac, there is no drivers or software that needs to be added in order to access and use a Firewire enclosure. However, some vendors have utilities they include, and in most likelihood the utility has never been updated since 10.2.whatever, hence the statement, "up to".

As long as it is firewire complaint, I wouldn't worry to much.

Now as to my own preferences, I like bridgeboards that use Oxford semiconductor 911, 912, and 924.

So, which enclosures are you looking at?

Tom N.

Looks like a nice enclosure.

No 922 chipset is fine, I think I just overlooked it when I typed the original reply. The 922 supports both Firewire 800/400 as well as USB, though the specific enclosure your looking at does not have a USB port.

Yes, generally you can replace the bridgeboard. However, LaCie doesn't sell them. You can get them from third parties, however there is no guarantee they will physically fit in the LaCie case.

Here are some places you can get bridgeboards from:

Firewire Depot:
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php

Firewire Direct;
http://www.fwdirect.com/

Granite Digital:
http://www.granitedigital.com/index.htm

When I checked the Firewire Direct link, there site wasn't loading. I assume it is a temp issue.

Tom N.

check the following for a wide selection of enclosures:

FireWire enclosures

the bridgeboards are the key element and you want to stay with either an Oxford or Initio based enclosure - they are compatible with Mac OS 9.2.x + (including all revs of OS 10)