Orange Converter for Macintosh

Last updated: November 14, 2001 Index of Questions My converter is not working properly or it locks my computer upon use. Is their any tips for using the Orange Converter with iTunes? Having trouble getting the Orange Converter with removable media Under Mac OS 9.2.1? Retrospect 4.3c cannot see my backup device. Is there any thing I can do? Is the Orange Converter Mac OS X compatible?

Q: My converter is not working properly or it locks my computer upon use.

There may be conflict between the Orange Converter extensions and a third party extension. The best way to determine this is to set your Extensions Manager to Mac OS 9.x.x Base. Then add the "FW Orange Converter SIM Module" and "FW Orange SCSI Converter Driver" extensions. Also include any extension required for the SCSI device you are attaching to the Orange Converter. If the problem stops restarting your Macintosh with this limited extension set, you have an extension conflict and you will have to track down the offending extension. If the problem persists: Make sure you have the latest version of the Orange Converter extensions (Available at http://www.orangemicro.com/updateconverter.html) Get the latest drivers for the SCSI device you are using. Be sure to put a terminator on the SCSI device or if the termination is built-in, make sure no external termination is added. Connect the converter in the following order. 1) Connect the terminated SCSI device to the Orange Converter 2) Power up the SCSI device. 3) Plug the FireWire cable into the computer then into the Orange Converter. At this time you should see some activity on the Converter's LED. It will blink several times then glow solid. When the light glows solid you should be able to access the device. Only use Converter's power supply if it doesn't operate better with out it. Note: Mac OS 9.2.x has built-in support for SBP-2 protocols and may not require the Orange Converter extensions with mass storage devices. Mac OS 9.2.x has built-in support for SBP-2 protocols and no Orange Converter driver is necessary. If Mac OS X does not have built-in support for your device, you must install a driver provided by the manufacturer of your device.

Q: Is their any tips for using the Orange Converter with iTunes?

Visit the the Apple FireWire and USB iTunes compatibility page (http://www.apple.com/itunes/compatibility/). Most of the information this page will apply to the Orange Converter under Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X.

Q: Having trouble getting the Orange Converter with removable media Under Mac OS 9.2.1?

The Orange Converter is based on the ANSI Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2). SCSI class drivers can use SBP-2 to talk to IEEE 1394 devices using the SCSI command set. Because Mac OS 9.2.1 has native support for SBP-2, the Orange Converter does not need any special driver support for most devices. Try the Orange Converter with out installing the Orange Converter drivers. If it doesn't work then install the Orange Converter drivers

Q: Retrospect 4.3c cannot see my backup device. Is there any thing I can do?

There may be a conflict between Retrospect extensions and the Orange Converter extensions. To work around this problem, add a Tilde "~" before both Orange Converter extensions. The "FW Orange SCSI Converter Driver" extension is too long to add the Tilde. Therefore you must shorten the name to "~FW Orange SCSI Converter Drivr". After adding the tilde to both extensions, restart the Macintosh.

Q: Is the Orange Converter Mac OS X compatible?

YES! The Orange Converter is based on the ANSI Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2). SCSI class drivers can use SBP-2 to talk to IEEE 1394 devices using the SCSI command set. Because Mac OS X has native support for SBP-2, the Orange Converter does not need any special driver support. Below is the results of compatibility test done under Mac OS X. Disks (Fixed, Removable, Zip) Disks are supported natively under Mac OS X. The storage driver is able to support HFS, HFS+ and DOS formats. Mounting the media as a volume, reading and writing is successful. If the media is not recognized during mount, then an option to prepare the media is presented. Standard file system tools (like Disk First Aid) recognize the mounted volume and are able to access it. Option to prepare media in a different format from the one that the media has is not available. Devices tested were Western Digital HDD, Iomega Jaz 2GB, Castlewood Orb 2.2, Iomega Zip 250 and Iomega Zip 100. Third party tools (Iomegaware, FWB, B?s Screw) were not available for testing at this time.   CD Devices (CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD) CD devices are supported natively under Mac OS X. The storage driver is able to support ISO9660, HFS and UDF file systems. Mounting CDs and reading data off mounted volumes is successful. Audio play option is available. At this time, the only software available to write to CDs was iTunes. The iTunes software was able to rip audio tracks off the CD and also write them to a different CD. (iTunes version 1.1.1 and it requires Mac OS X 10.0.2) Devices tested were Yamaha 8424, Philips CDD2550 and Panasonic DVD. Magneto Optical (MO) Drives MO disks are supported natively under Mac OS X. Support is same as disks. The original release 10.0.0 (4K78) supported only 512-bytes sector size, which means 640MB media is not supported. Update 10.0.1 (4L13) and above has support for 640MB media. Device tested was Olympus MO. Scanners VueScan (http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html) is available for MacOS X and works with many popular scanners. Check with the manufacturer of your scanner to see if they have a Mac OS X compliant scanning application. Printers A printer driver to test printers is not available at this time either from manufacturer or from third party driver vendors.

© Orange Micro, Inc. 2002. All rights reserved.