Followup: Snow Leopard Hates FireWire 400

Background: As some of you may already know, a number of users are reporting that their FireWire 400 disc burners are failing to operate properly under Snow Leopard (10.6.x), though they still work flawlessly under Leopard (10.5.x). I, myself have such a problem with the external drive on my iMac, but when I tried to get some "support" from Apple Tech Support, I was informed that Snow Leopard no longer supports FireWire 400.

Since my FireWire 400 Time Machine drive still works just fine, I found this answer to be a bit, shall we say, oversimplified. Others chimed in that the tech support person didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Fast forward to today: Hoping that this annoying bug had been squashed in one of those unspecified "compatibility" updates, I installed the Mac OS X 10.6.1 update shortly after it came out. The short answer is: no, they didn't fix the bug, but they may have made it worse. Mostly, Snow Leopard can see the FireWire interface, but can't see anything in the drive within. Sometimes a disc appears on my Desktop, but any application that tries to access it "beachballs."

I'm going to try to get this burner operational by connecting to a USB Universal Drive Adaptor. If that works I'll see if I can find a proper enclosure that's Snow Leopard certified.

I'm posting this message to comp.sys.mac.system, Apple Feedback and my user group blog . I'm also forwarding a copy to Joe Kissell, author of Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, whom I've been keeping in the loop regarding this problem.

User Group Meeting!

We Have a Winner!

Regular Meetings Discontinued

Do to poor attendance, regular monthly MugWump meetings have been discontinued for the time being. The meeting night seems to be a moving target for many members. I am willing to host meetings at my home anytime but regular monthly meetings have not been working out. Maybe we should try a bimonthly meeting on a weekend. What do you think? Suggestions and comments are welcome. Please post them here or send me an email.
Bill

Meetings?

There was no notice of a meeting in November. Will there be a December meeting? I hope we will be notified by blog or email. Thanks. Llama Lady

Better Backup Solution

I just found a better backup program for your Mac. It is better than SuperDuper in my opinion because it is easier to use, works on both Tiger and Leopard, the demo version is not crippled in any way (in fact you don't ever have to pay for it if you don't want - it is donationware) and if you do want to pay for it, it is only $10. It is called Carbon Copy Cloner (or CCC for short) and I used to use it but there hadn't been any updates for a very long time so I switched to SuperDuper. Now, version3 is out and it seems to be the best of the bootable backup solutions for Mac owners that use OSX 10.3 and above.
Click here if you want to download it:
http://www.bombich.com/cgi-bin/download_ccc

Some Very Creative Animation

Check it out! Any computer buff might have a similar fantasy!

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34244097/