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Author Topic: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive  (Read 4030 times)

Offline Graveyard

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Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« on: May 19, 2014, 05:27:18 AM »
A friend gave me a few months ago a ForMac FireWire 400 external enclosure. I don't know what kind of optical drive it originally had, but i have IDE LG dvd-rw in it right now.
The problem is that i haven't been able to boot from it on any of my Macs. I've tried on my dual usb iBook, PowerMac G3 B&W, iMac G3, iMac G5... None of them recognize the darn thing as a bootable drive. The discs i used are all perfect, they are bootable once inserted in the internal optical drive on each of the machines. But not a single machine was able to boot from this drive. Am i doing something wrong? I saw a few jumpers inside the enclosure on the controller. But i can't find any manuals to see what they do. More than that, seems like ForMac is long gone...
Any ideas?
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supernova777

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Re: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2014, 08:50:18 AM »
my friend just got a "Formac" Gallery ADC display
if it wasnt for that id be at a loss to understand what u meant by the word "formac"
and that it is actually a brand name of a 3rd party company who made apple compatible peripherals + Displays.
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Offline Graveyard

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Re: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2014, 10:21:59 PM »
I also have a 20" ForMac Gallery ADC display connected to my Quicksilver... It's still a great display despite its age.
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27" iMac Intel Core i5 3,1 GHz, 16GB ddr3, 1TB hdd, Radeon HD 6970 1GB gddr5
MacPro 8 core Xeon 2,8 GHz
PowerMac G5 Dual Core 2,3 GHz
17" iMac G5 1,6GHz
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver dual 800MHz
PowerMac G4 MDD, Dual 1,25GHz
PowerMac G3 B&W 400MHz
iMac G3 Ruby 400MHz
IMac G3 Blueberry 400MHz
PowerBook G3 400MHz, AirPort
Macintosh Quadra 610
Macintosh Classic II
SGI O2 R10000SC 175MHz, 192 MB ram, 4GB hdd
Other stuff:PS4 slim, PS3 slim, Xbox classic, Xbox 360, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DSi XL, Gameboy Advance, Original GameBoy, GameBoy color.

Offline MacTron

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Re: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2014, 02:27:26 PM »
Not all dvd drives are fully compatible with Mac.
Here you have one that is still on sale and is very cheap:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=958.msg3523

But it is a SATA drive so it will need a SATA PCI card or a PATA/SATA adapter.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2014, 02:45:16 PM by MacTron »
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Offline Graveyard

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Re: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2014, 10:25:55 PM »
So the optical drive i have inside the ForMac enclosure might be the culprit? Hmmm... I'm gonna try and see what other optical drives i have around here and check whether they'll be recognized as bootable drives or not. Thanks for the tip.
I don't need another optical drive in any of my Macs. My B&W and Quicksilver both have brand new Dvd-rw drives and they boot flawlessly. I just want to get a dvd drive in this enclosure and to be able to boot from it in case any of my portable or iMac G3 machines will decide not to boot from their own internal drives.
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27" iMac Intel Core i5 3,1 GHz, 16GB ddr3, 1TB hdd, Radeon HD 6970 1GB gddr5
MacPro 8 core Xeon 2,8 GHz
PowerMac G5 Dual Core 2,3 GHz
17" iMac G5 1,6GHz
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver dual 800MHz
PowerMac G4 MDD, Dual 1,25GHz
PowerMac G3 B&W 400MHz
iMac G3 Ruby 400MHz
IMac G3 Blueberry 400MHz
PowerBook G3 400MHz, AirPort
Macintosh Quadra 610
Macintosh Classic II
SGI O2 R10000SC 175MHz, 192 MB ram, 4GB hdd
Other stuff:PS4 slim, PS3 slim, Xbox classic, Xbox 360, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DSi XL, Gameboy Advance, Original GameBoy, GameBoy color.

Offline IIO

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Re: Booting from firewire 400 external dvd drive
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2014, 05:26:42 PM »
that the drive is not fully supported by macs is your best bet. otherwise firewire enclosures are a very easy, safe way how to boot into OS9.
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