Getting an EXT. SCSI JAZ drive to work on a G4...help

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
OK well I've tried two ways to get my SCSI JAZ drive to work with my new G4 FW800. 1st, I purchased the IOMEGA JAZ JET SCSI PCI card. Didn't work. Iomega told me that there was no support for Mac OSX. Weird... I thought a scsi pci card was a scsi pci card. JAZ disk wouldn't mount. So I sent it back and exchanged it for what I was told would do the trick.... buying the IOMEGA JAZ FIREWIRE ADAPTER. Basically it's just a little cable connector that has SCSI-2 on one side and 2 Firewire ports on the other.



No Dice! This time I was told by IOMEGA TECH SUPPORT that JAZ is basically a dead line of product. It's been phased out so they aren't offering support for anything recent...meaning the iomega firewire adapter is only supported up until OS 10.2.1. Lucky me, I'm running 10.2.6. I can't do a clean system install (nor would I really want to) to a supportable version of the OS because my computers system disk came with 10.2.4.



The "live tech support" guy basically informed me that I was S.O.L.



But I can't believe that the JAZ's are simply obsolete and unusable now. There's gotta be people out there who still use these JAZ external drives. How are you guys doing it? Are you buying SCSI pci cards that actually work? If so, which ones?



help??

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tripleo

    <snip>How are you guys doing it? <snip>



    I have a networked PowerWave running 10.1 and close enough for me to reach when swapping cartridges. It still works for archive and backup purposes, and it serves other purposes. Would love to afford a decent KVM, but the gHead http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/...duct_id=259377 on the older ATI card works most of the time.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Let's move this into the Genius Bar and see if you get more replies. Tech support does belong in there.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Sorry, I can't help, but didn't OSX have very bad SCSI support? There have been many updates but I don't remember anyone saying it was fixed yet. I admit I havn't been paying very close attention to OSX's SCSI support.

  • Reply 4 of 5
    709709 Posts: 2,016member
    All right, you had to go and make me dust off the old Jaz drive to see if it still worked, didn't you?



    Well, it did. I'm also running 10.2.6, with the Jaz FireWire>SCSI converter as well, so I think you might have other issues. Maybe a faulty SCSI converter? Those things were notoriously flaky IIRC.



    Also, make sure you plug everything in before turning the Jaz drive on. And plug the converter into the lower SCSI port on the back of the Jaz. And set the SCSI ID # to something in the mid-range, like 3 or 4.



    Voodoo, thy name is SCSI.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    tripleotripleo Posts: 26member
    Hmmm which Mac are you using? I did put the scsi connector in the bottom port... but I did NOT mess with the scsi ID#. I didnt think it mattered since the computer was not going to read it as a scsi devivce but as a hot swappable firewire device. I rebooted a few times to make sure it wasnt anything like that I plugged things in in the wrong order. The reboot would rectify that problem. So I don't know. But I can't test it out now because I already returned the adapter. (dang!) So I dont know what to do. I think I might just get an ATTO or Adaptec SCSI PCI card that I've seen people talk about when refering to getting their JAZ's working with their G4. Do you have any suggestions for me?







    Quote:

    Originally posted by 709

    All right, you had to go and make me dust off the old Jaz drive to see if it still worked, didn't you?



    Well, it did. I'm also running 10.2.6, with the Jaz FireWire>SCSI converter as well, so I think you might have other issues. Maybe a faulty SCSI converter? Those things were notoriously flaky IIRC.



    Also, make sure you plug everything in before turning the Jaz drive on. And plug the converter into the lower SCSI port on the back of the Jaz. And set the SCSI ID # to something in the mid-range, like 3 or 4.



    Voodoo, thy name is SCSI.




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