Hi

Got me a new toy today, a NEC 3500 in USB2/Firewire enclosure.
Okay, first this was thought to be a Christmas gift but now I will keep it and buy yet an other one.

Everything works great except when I connect the drive to compus firewire port. The flashy all-around neon lights are one, nice and cool, but the tray doesn´t even open. Any ideas?

Some hard facts.
Compu;
Asus P4P-800E mobo
VIA 6307 firewire chip
Firewire enabled in BIOS and shows up in device manager
Windoze XP SP1a

Enclosure;
Oxford OXFW911 chip (firmware 3.8?)
Agere FW802B chip

This is my first external enclosure adventure, so please ask if you need more info.

BTW, I will post some NeroInfo and my first USB2 burn...

Have you tried another firewire cable?

Hmm, never thought on that, because a new cable was delivered with enclosure.

Midnight here right now, but I will buy a new one tomorrow.

I hope you have better luck with the Oxford 911. The best transfer rate I could get was 13MB/s. It appears that the 911 does not detect the NEC as a UDMA2 device.

Went to Prolific PL-3507 and now transfers at 23MB/s Firewire...

I know you have good knowledge about external enclosures. Do you know whitch of above chips handles Firewire respectively USB2?

BTW, I would be happy if my 3500 was detected at all. Right now, -nada-!

@Pinto2

You are getting a great transfer rate under USB2. 21MB/s is really great performance and will support the NEC at 12X with no problems, but you need a little more to support 16X.

ON YOUR PROBLEM !!!

May I suggest you try the external setup on another machine to determine if you setup has a problem. I have no knowledge on your VIA Firewire chipset on your motherboard...

Today I bought a new firewire cable but still nogo.

BTW, does anybody know if the pin setting master/ slave has any inpact on function USB2 >-< Firewire?
Read something about this on an other forum, but didn´t see any good answer...

@Pinto2
It's on a CASE by CASE Basic (No pun intended)...
You will normally find a sticker stating that the drive must be set as master...

You need to set your DVD burner drive to "Master" in external case.
Whoops, I stand corrected.....beach hobo says case by case basis!

If you are using a prolific 3507 and cannot get your firewire connection to display, upgrade the prolific 3507 firmware via USB 2 to latest firmware (actually sept 2004).
http://tech.prolific.com.tw/visitor/...brw_result.asp
Scroll down for firmware, you need;
sp_plx507_W98v1400.zip.
That should fix your detection problem if not, Somewhere posted in this forum is the link for the 3507 Sept. upgrade. Look under external enclosures.
If unsuccessful, PM me for file.

You must have your DVD writer drive installed in the case, to upgrade 3507 chipset firmware & only use USB 2 connect to flash.
dishinit

Thanks for all your efforts, but...
See here.

Edit. Anybody knows how to flash Oxford chip? I have Java runtime environment installed.

Pinto,
Sorry about that.
Let us know if you have success with your Oxford 911 chip upgrade.

For those who want the latest Sept 7 3507 firmware upgrade, go to:
http://www.ahgogo.net/ProlificFirmware.zip
Courtesy of minchin
dishinit

pinto2... I'm not sure if this helps you but this thread starting at post #15, it talks about shorting out pin 57 on the Oxford 911 chipset and so on to update the firmware.

These enclosures are a mess! I got one that has an ALi 5621 A1 chipset and I get a burst rate of 13mb/s firewire and 18mb/s USB good enough for nec 2500 but not my 3500a then plugging the cables into my 708UF with nec chipset and get 24mb/s firewire and 21mb/s USB. I was going to strip out the 708a thats in the plextor enclosure and try the nec 3500a in it but I was afraid I'd blow it up as its my best burner.

Anyways hope this helps you.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....oxford+911+pin

Hmm, I never have to do any pin mod to do flashing....
Look at:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...4&postcount=56
Use this version of the java uploader... have all the option available for you to set stuff.
I don't understand this... why are some Oxford911 bridgeboard can do over 13MB while others can't?
Another thing I have found out which might be of interst to some of you....
I reported in the above thread about a Oxford922 chipset bridgeboard that supports FW800 + USB2.0. This is a 1 chip solution bridgeboard that I attached to an old 2 bay SCSI case. So I was having problem detecting it and it ended up that the cables I order from Compugeeks was faulty!!! Order another from Dealsonics, it can now detect the board....
Hook up my Pioneer 108 and BENQ1620 to it.... Now, CDSpeed burst rate is 108 -> 27MB/s; BENQ -> 21MB/s. BENQ is on master and PIONEER is on slave.
However, when I burn test discs.... both can't go pass 12x..... I guess read burst rate test is not a sure fire way to confirm if you can burn at higher speed or not.
Another thing with Oxford chip set that I have observed is that with both the 911 and the 922, if you set the speed higher than what it can handle ( say try burn 16x with 911 which can only do 13MB, 8x speed), it will hit the highest speed it can go... then gradually its speed will degrade and degrade to even slower than the max speed it.... so it goes like 6x->8x->10x (it can't really handle this) -> 8x -> 6x. However, if you set it to 8x max in the burning software, it will go 6x->8x and stay there....

It looks to me that Oxford chips will get confused or overwhelmed when pushed too hard.... and it won't recover fully once it is 'confused'.....

That's it man.... enough of Oxford for me.... nowadays, instead of looking at the chipset that an enclosure is using to try to find Oxford 911 to buy.... I look to it to avoid....

It seems Prolific is the way to go.... although I had some positive result from INITIO chipset also.... but haven't got the time to do more testing on my INITIO box with the various burners.....

Yeah, but now I´m stuck with Oxford and like to solve my problem...

And I´m all confused. Java, uploader, updater and god knows what.

Does anybody know WHERE to download latest firmware for Oxford OXFW911 chip? Can I use any firmware, while my version is "3.8"?

BTW, why is my chip identified as "922" by uploader and "911" by updater...
I´m lost right now.

In one of the "other" treads in the NEC forum there are details and more info on the Oxford 911 chipset in an external enclosure. By the way, V3.8 is the latest firmware for the 911.

From my testing, it appears no matter what you do the 911 doesn't see the NEC 3500 as a UDMA2 device but as a multi-word device and therefore it's limited to 13MB/s on the Nero CD/DVD Speed test. I gave up and switched to Prolific...

That's only when it is trying to identify a 'blank' device, you choose it to help it identify if it can't. You don't get to choose anything if it can identify the device attached. I got to see it in action once when a flash failed.
The software already tell you that it has found an Oxford911 device.
However, like beach-hobo said, I can confirm that not only does NEC3500 has a problem, Pioneer 108, BENQ1620 are also not recognize as UDMA2 device.....

Update...

Hi again. Been busy at work so I didn´t have time to test all proposals you gave me.
But now it´s finally done. I have tested three different firewire cables. I have also tested my enclosure on a firewire PCI card equiped with Texas Instr. chip, on a IBM box with Agere firewire chip and at last on a Dell box also equiped with TI chip. Non of these setups were able to recognise my NEC 3500 in enclosure.

Now I need your advice. This enclosure burns very good (i my opinion, excellent) when connected to USB2. Firewire connection (option) is clearly of no use to me.
I can RMA this enclosure, but I dont know what kind I will get in replacement...
So here are my alternatives.
1. I keep these enclosure and ask seller for reduction in price.
2. RMA´s this enclosure and hope (pray) for the "best" replacement, (other firewire chip).

Any advice much appreciated.

Finally one example how this enclosure burns YUDEN000T02 at 16x, fw 2.16 stock. Time: 6:24

@pinto2

Hi again,
I was playing around with the Uploader for the Oxford911 chipset in my Belkin case and set a wrong option. The Firewire part of the case was not detected by WinXP-SP2. The USB2 part was working with no problem. What I had to do to correct the problem was to do what Orford calls a "Force Flash". It's detailed out in their manual. It puts a ground on Pin57 if I remember correctly. It's also detailed out in the other thread on externals.

I was able to use the Firewire ports again, but they were still limited to 13MB/s.

What I would say, if you are happy with 12X and more than likely 13X (PCAT) burns with your 3500, I would keep the case. If you can exchange it for a Prolific 3507 without any additional cost, you also might want to go this way.

Wow... this forum is amazing!

Two days ago I played around with my Oxford911 and set the Master to CD/DVD Drive and some other options and now the bridge is gone... Doesn't get recognized under XPSP2... Damn, damn, damn... For one thing I ordered a Genesys and guess what: No problems at all with my Benq 822A+.

I would, however, like to use the Oxford in connection with an external hard case. Can you mail me the manual and the "force flash" program beach-hobo (try derdembo@gmail.com). I will be eternal gratefull and the case will get a little 'beach-hobo' sticker if I get it to work again...

TIA,
Dembo

Do a Google Search for "Oxford" and you will find their site in England. You can download the manual from there. There is no program to go along with the manual. You use the uploader you currently have...

@beach-hobo: Yup, found it (sorry, I was posting before acctually looking). It sounds like the jumper pins to shorten 57 will be obvious to find, right?

If I can get the Oxford to work again I will try out the different settings to nail down the one that disables any functionality

DerDembo,
I have never need to short any pin for me to flash my Oxford911. In fact, the uploader recognize that it is a 'blank' Oxford 911 bridgeboard when flash failed.
Maybe it is just the bridgeboard that I have, but I have tried it on several brands of my exclosures with Oxford911, none of them required this 'shorting'
Try it out.....

@minchin: Sounds like bad news to me

But just to be precise: That flash went well, what went wrong was playing around with the advanced options of the 1.4 Java Flasher (i.e. were you can enter stuff like the 6s delay after power up before scanning for drives). I do not fully remeber which setting cut of the IEEE communication (I think it might have been a combination if specifying CD/DVD Drive as master and enabling something....) but the firmware flash itself ran pretty smooth.

I might have to wait till the weekend before I have time to play around with the drive but I'll report whether beach-hobos trick worked. Would be great. The BenQ works flawless in the Genesys case but I'd rather connect an old 30GB harddisk via the Oxford-Firewire bridge than via the USB2 connection (which still works even without the Oxford-Firewire bridge working).

I have too a nec3500 in a firewire extrenal enclosure, but with mac (before was with XP in a PC and the problem was the same). The burner it´s fitted as master and the system don´t recognizes the nec drive, but if I change the nec for a Plextor 712 or liteon 811 recognizes them without problems, so the problem it´s the nec drive in external enclosure (mine it´s only firewire), but I have found a partial solution: I switch on the box -mine has on/off button-, and then the system don´t recognizes the drive; then unplug the firewire cable and wait 15 seconds -a led blink in the box and in the drive-, then plug again the cable and tachan! the drive it´s recognized.
I have seen too that if I switch on the firewire box previously to run the system, the drive it´s recognized. As I have said before this problem it´s only with a nec 3500 or a 2500, but no with a Plextor 712 or liteon 811 that I have tried too.