Daisy-chaining multiple drives FW400/800??

[RandB]

According to Digidesign, external firewire drives with the Oxford 911 or Oxford 924 chipset are supported.

Okay...

The 911 drives have two Firewire 400 plugs, making it possible to daisy-chain multiple drives between the computer and the Digi hardware.

But the 924 drives have but one Firewire 400 plug, and have TWO Firewire 800 plugs. So with these, while it's not possible to daisy-chain drives using FW-400 cabling, you *can* daisy-chain drives using the FW-800 cabling, which would mean you'd have no other choice but to plug the Digi hardware in to the end of the chain via the only Firewire type that's available from Digi, FW-400.

But Digi's documentation says you shouldn't "mix" 400 and 800.

My local store, an authorized Digidesign dealer, says it is supported, and that plugging the 002rack or 003rack to the end of a FW800 chain via FW400 would essentially "convert" the entire chain to FW400, thus, you're not "mixing" the two. (A little counter-intuitive, if you ask me. But that's what I'm asking.)

This would seem to be the only way to use the Oxford 924 chipset in a way that allows multiple drives to be daisy-chained.

My question is fairly simple: Is this supported?

The reason for my asking is that the Oxford 911 chipset seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, as companies are moving away from the Oxford 911 and toward the Oxford 924 chipset more and more.

Can anyone clear this up?

Randy

[tpthai2]

I can tell you my experience with two Macs.

First with a MacMini and two Glyph firewire drives.
These Glyph drives have two FW800 and one FW400 ports on each drive.

Mac Mini into the FW400 port on Glyph 1.
Glyph 1 FW800 to Glyph 2 FW800.
Glyph 2 FW400 to Digi 002r FW400.
No problems.

MacPro (2008) Same two Glyph Drives:

Tried two configurations.
1. 002r to rear FW400 port on Mac Pro.
Glyph drives connected individually to
front and rear FW800 ports on the MacPro.
No problems.

2. 002r to rear FW400 port on Mac Pro.
Glyph drives chained FW800 to FW800 on 1 and 2.
Then FW800 to front port buss on the MacPro.

I like this configuration the best as it seemed to access data
faster and avoided any possible issues with connecting
FW400 and FW800 to the same buss.

These configurations worked for me. Hope they are helpful to your situation.

[chicken]

Same goes for me. Macbook Pro with 2 Glyph drives (FW 800) and a 003 console FW 400.

No problem.

Chicken

[Forum Member LE]

Part of the problem you can experience is not based on the 400 + 800 not working together but that vendors don't have a set way of doing the conversion.
Far too many drives out there still seem to be build for data storage not streaming so they use methods in their design that cater to more toward that.
You could use them as backup or just off loading data for years with no problems but for video or audio work they tend to have inconsistent throughput.
Just because they have the correct Oxford Bridge doesn't help when they have other things going on in their design that can affect the transfer.
Similar to the original ZIP drives that you couldn't turn the sleep mode off on so they would power down and you could wake them up from SCSI samplers, but they would wake accordingly from the computer.
Iomega then changed it to a software function so to turn it on required a computer.
This is one of the reasons why some drives that have the 400/800 ability work fine and others give occassional errors or even consistent problems.
It would take too much time and resources for Digi to test all these drives so just saying not recommended his the best route.

Also remember beig an authorized dealer just means they sell not that they know.
Most places have one person who really knows and the other reps ask hin when they can't fake their way through it.
Some don't even have that.