It was a rhetorical question. In fact it was a troll to get people with drive problems to check the type of cable in their enclosure.

But anyway, this bad case of mine was factory sealed and it was the first time I'd looked inside. Not my fault.

However, the one at home was built by me from an old case, new drive, and a 911 bridge card from Granite Digital. If THAT one has a 40 wire cable I'm going to have to slap myself.

Although I haven't yet tested it DOES seem to me that this could have a LOT to do with bad 1394 playback. I wonder if sonic noticed the cable type when they had Craig's drive in hand? It could be easy to overlook if you aren't thinking about it.

Rob Mack

I'm waiting on the definitive from you Rob on this before I break open the Acomdata box...

Ah, well then.

I don't have THE definitive answer yet but I did swap out the ribbon cable in the acom box (from 40 to 80 wire) and the drive plays back fine on my machine at home.

However, my home machine had less trouble with stalling than the work machine so I'll test the box there on Monday.

I think that the cable swap did the trick but I'm not totally sure yet. And I know for a fact that it shouldn't have been using the 40 wire cable no matter what.

BTW, I used a longer 80 wire cable, plugging the drive into the last connector on the cable. Shorter would be better but evidently not required.

Rob

Okay Pete, here's the definitive:

Three systems:
P4 2.0GHz
PIII 1.0GHz
PIII 700Mhz

Three enclosures:
-ADS Pyro dual link. -- Works well on all systems.
-Acom 75 GB with what looks like a Lucent bridge. Replaced stock ata33 ribbon cable with an 80 conductor ATA66 or better cable -- Stalls on all systems are much, much fewer but still occur on occasion. Some times seems to happen after changing the timeline zoom level.
-Homebuilt system with Granite Digital bridge board. Flashed to newest firmware rev. -- moderately frequent stalls and will replace with new ADS enclosure.

As far as your Acom enclosure goes, if you are still talking to Acom and they're willing to look at it then you can send it to them with a note to look at the cable and to TELL you what is being used. Otherwise, open it yourself and check. If you later have to send it in to them you may have to yell and escalate because the warranty is void after you open the box. It works, btw, but don't expect any useful help while you're yelling. You have to stop once they agree to help.

Rob

Thanks RM for your efforts on this one. My drive was fixed (unrelated to any of this) by Acomdata back in Feb. right before the warranty expired (they put a new controller board in it), so now it's out of warranty. I'm working with two external 80GB (Acom & a Maxtor that was also fixed under warranty recently) and two internal 120GB WD drives. I'll probably pull the cable on the Acomdata box when I'm ready to go back to it. Also I've been reluctant to try the Maxtor drive with V 4.0 b/c of all this (it worked fine with my other editing software) but might try it next. I'll post again as circumstances warrant, but thanks again for your help.