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.

If my memory is correct, I lost the connectivity to the 911 case when I changed one of the options that concerned MOUNTING the device. After I changed the mounting option, the case was not reconized by the UpLoader. After I reset the 911 will the forced flash method the case was reconized one again and I was able to use the UpLoader again...

The 6s delay is necessary for some drives (like LiteOn drives) that would not get recognize (usually you see that the LED stay lit after you turn on the drive, or you don't see the drive being recognize). It takes a bit of time for the drive to get initialized and some drives take longer than other.
I would also turn on "Detect Drive with non-standard signature" (or the like wording). This might help in recognizing some drives. I have never use my NEC3500 in enclosure (went straight into the case, too much work to take it out).
It is true that some DVD writer works better than others in external enclosure. Like the BENQ 1620 is a bit problematic with enclosure (Oxford922, won't write properly at all, B7P9) while the Pioneer 108A is flawless in all enclosures.....

Hope this helps.

Success... firewire finally working.

Been playing around with Oxford Uploader for a while and my eclosure is finally working on firewire.
Don´t ask me what caused the earlier nofunction, because I don´t know. Looks like some settings were missed and enclosure was configured to host a HDD.

Uploader guide. Google for uploader and don´t forget to have Java runtimes installed.

Can anybody provide info how to tweak firewire function? Why is my speed on firewire slower then the one USB2...

BTW, I never followed beach-hobo´s advice to "jumper pin on chip", and I hope noone tries this before testing all other possibilities. Note his post above.

Attachments.
1. Transfer rates with firewire
2. Uploader and settings
3. Transfer rates with USB2.

At least yours work to that extend.... Quite a few of us have enclosure with Oxford911 that failed to get over the 13MB/s rate....I have given up hope on the Oxford911. It seems that there are Oxford911 based enclosure that can do better, but I have yet to know the exact brands that those enclosure uses.... Plus, you never know if they will switch the bridgeboard from batch to batch or not....

You have put in every option that seem to have some effect.... I am not sure what else you can do per se....

I am surprise that your USB2 port runs faster than Firewire... do you know what chip they use for the USB2 side?

Ehhm... isn´t this one chip solution...
Sure, I can open enclosure and check it up. Will make a test with a HDD anyway.

Be back.

Update: There is also a Ali M5621 A1 chip on the backside of board. (Not visible at first, but now I have dismantled the complete enclosure...)

Oxford911 is a firewire only chip... Oxford922 is a USB2/Firewire combo chip.
I am surprise that the ALi is capable of such high speed... I guess you have a rather 'updated design' bridgeboard.

Brave soul for dismantling your enclosure

@pinto2: Ahhh, thanks for the pictures - now I remember the fatal switch, here's what what you have to do if you are mad at your Oxford911:

Select the master (in my case CD/DVD Drive) and enable 'Power drive on login (and fix master). The result is an Oxford911 that isn't recognized by the OS or by the flasher... I hope that force flashing it will bring it back to life.

@beach-hobo: Did you have to enable force flash mode in the Java flasher? I do have a non-java version of the flasher which allows acitvation of a special force flash mode, I don't seem to remeber this on the 1.4 Java flasher, though...

Okay, I think it´s safe to say; firewire on CD/DVD drives in this enclosure (OXFW911 chip) is not a good solution.
I take your advice beach-hobo and spare the firewire for HDD.

In the end, I´m quite satisfied with 21Mb/s burstrate and safe 12x burn speeds on USB2 bus...

BTW, I also have a command line utility (fw9.exe) if anybody needs to forceflash OXFW9** chip.

Pinto please send me this command line util. My external box has oxford chip and recognize the nec drive as HD, though I can read and write CD/dvds without problems, but when I try update the firm of the burner with binflash the system can´t find the drive, so I think could be a problem of the external enclosure.

@beach-hobo: Cool, so we finally sorted things out: To all the Oxford911 users: Do not enable "Power drive on login (and fix master)".

I wonder what the damn setting is supposed to do anyway? Nobody is login into anything, right? And "Power drive"? I mean the drive gets power without the stupid setting...

I'll report on monday how the forced flash went for me.

First, try to flash your drive when on USB2 bus...

And make sure your external drive shows up in devicemanager and/or in Nero info tool, before even trying to flash.

BTW, I will send you the util as soon as I´m back home (9pm GMT)...

Okay.... I think we are at a point were we should ask a moderator to move this thread to the general hardware forum - really lots of usefull information in it...

The good news: I managed to get my firewire enclosure up and running again (whhhooohoooo). I found to pins on the bridge board and followed the instructions from the Oxford manual for putting the device into forced flash mode (a slight warning: The manual tells you to look for JP2 and short it, now JP2 on my bridge board is the +5V power supply - wouldn't recommend to short these... - just used some common sense and shorted the only two pins avaiable on the board).

From here on things got a bit confused: I wasn't able to use the Java Uploader to get the thing working again, but a windows uploader I found did the trick with a DOS utility called FW9 (puts the device back to post production state runs fine in a DOS box under XPSP2). FW9 came with the afforementioned windows uploader, however, the firmware that came with it didn't work

So I had to use the firmware that came with the Java uploader and use the windows uploader. Confused? Well, so was I but it is now working (again).

Unfourtunately it still doesn't cooperate with a BenQ 822A with newest firmware... So now there is a harddisk in the Oxford911 enclosure and the BenQ is living in a Genesys711 enclosure which works like charm

Interessting aside: If I plug two PCs into the Oxford911 they both see the harddisk - doesn't work with the Genesys, though

If somebody needs the flashing tools - just contact me and I'll send them to you, be warned: It seems there are one way streets that'll fry you enclosure.

I tried this on my 3507 'C' and it said it couldn't read the chip. The firmware file in the .zip is called PL3507-0907B.hex. Could it be only for 'B' chips? If so, does anyone have the 09/07 firmware for a 3507 'C'?
thanks,wolffman