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Has anyone run into this one?

I'm running Mac OS 9.1 on a G4 with an ATTO PCI card that gives me a regular SCSI and an Ultra SCSI chain via those new mini 50 pin outputs. On the regular SCSI output I have been using a DDS-3 tape backup drive (traditional 50-pin Centronic connectors), and recently ordered a new Yamaha 16x CD burner, which I intended to daisy chain to the tape drive, either before or after. When the Yamaha unit arrived, I found that it had only the mini-50 pin connections. I was able to find a mini-50 to Centronic-50 SCSI cable at the local store, and after making sure my SCSI IDs were unique, and that the Yamaha was terminated, I connected the CD burner in series to the tape drive. (Chain looked like this: mini 50 pin out of PCI to Centronics 50 pin tape drive... Centronics 50 pin out of tape drive into mini 50 pin CD burner).

Now the problem: the CD burner worked perfectly, but as long as the tape drive was in the chain, the upload and download speed slowed to a microscopic crawl. When I disconnected the CD burner (and terminated the tape drive) the transfer speeds returned to normal.

Anyone have any ideas how I can make this work without constantly connecting and disconnecting my gear, which is definitely high on the "pain in the ass" index?

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Comments

Rader Ranch Thu, 10/25/2001 - 08:43

i'm a little confused what you mean by upload and download speed, and you didn't mention which BU app you use with the tape drive, but i use Mezzo, and it requires that the tape drive be last in the scsi chain and terminated. otherwise your speed goes to pot and one can get other errors as well. i dunno if the same would be true for Retrospect or ???, but worth a shot maybe.

Ang1970 Thu, 10/25/2001 - 18:44

You might need to go into the ATTO program ExpressProTools.

Switch from "buses and drives" to "buses and devices". Your tape drive should show up in the list. Click the "i" to open the device configuration window. Make sure you have the proper settings for bus speeds, synch xfer, wide scsi, etc. If you need help with these settings, write down all the info on that setup page and post it here.

Guest Thu, 10/25/2001 - 21:18

It sounds like Rader Ranch may have hit it on the head. Sounds like Retrospect is doing the same thing as his software. (And my ATTO settings are the ones Digidesign recommended, and never gave me problems before). The only reason the tape drive is first instead of last in the chain was I was able to find a mini 50 to Centronic 50 cable more quickly than a mini to mini. I guess the next step is to get the mini-to-mini cable so I can try putting the CD burner before the tape drive instead of after. The way things were, I was getting xfer rates registering at .1 MB (yup, that's point one) per minute instead of the usual 60MB/minute or so! (That's what I meant by upload/download speeds). Thanks guys for the quick responses!