H/W buffer error -External FW Drive

[dwilson]

I can't seem to get my external drives to playback
a session with out getting the error "audio device buffer underflowed" try decreasing the H/W Buffer size..., etc. error 6085.
Tried every combination of H/W buffer size and DAE
playback buffer, CPU usage, etc. Still no go. Sessions work fine on the Internal HD, where the PTLE App resides, but not on the externals. Tried Unplugging and replugging the Drives, etc. Didn't try chaining it off the 002, which Digi doesn't recommend.
These drives were supposedly approved drives I purchased from my vendor along with the 002 rig.
They read as Mac OS Extended - do I need to
reformat them some other way?
Any helpfull hints appreciated

Dual 1.42
Digi 002, LE 6.1
La Cie d2 80 gig FW HD
La Cie d2 160 gig FW HD

[DigiTechSupt]

dwilson,

There is a known issue with Firewire 800 Macs and the 002 when using Firewire drives. We recommend using a PCI Firewire card to connect your drives to on these systems. Below is the information listed on the compato docs:

FireWire Drives and Power Mac G4 "FW800" Models

The following problem exists with the Digi 002 & Digi 002 Rack and the 2003 Power Mac G4 "FW800" models with FireWire 800 ports:

Recording with the Digi 002 or 002 Rack to a FireWire drive connected to any of the 3 built-in Firewire ports on these computers can result in -6085 errors.
On these computers, Digidesign recommends using a dedicated internal ATA/IDE drive for recording.
The use of a Third Party FireWire PCI card is necessary with FW800 machines with Digi 002 or 002 Rack if the user wishes to either record to or boot from an external FireWire drive. If using FireWire drives with Digi 002 or 002 Rack & the 2003 Power Mac G4 FW800 models, a FireWire PCI adapter card must be used.
This problem only occurs on the 2003 Power Mac G4 FW800 desktop models. All other supported computers can use FireWire drives connected to the built-in FireWire ports.

You can find supported Firewire cards here:

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/osx/stg/fwcards.cfm

I hope this helps.

Mike