Prolific PL3507 Firewire Device
One of the many problems I’ve been having with my computer hardware the past couple of weeks is my firewire drive case overheating (it’s pretty hot/humid in my room, especially during midday I’d imagine). So I got a new firewire drive case which is made of metal instead of plastic and seems to have better cooling in general. Of course stock Fedora Core 2 doesn’t support firewire, but I built myself a fresh 2.6.6 kernel which supposedly has working firewire.
And of course… it doesn’t work. It turns out my new firewire drive case is using a Prolific PL3507 chipset, of which there are extremely few mentions on the entirety of the Internet. I did find an LKML post saying that it doesn’t work on 2.6 kernels but did on 2.4 kernels. Absolutely wonderful. Why they don’t use the now-standard Oxford 911 chipset I don’t know, but returning the case at this point probably isn’t much of an option.
Why is it so hard for hardware like this to Just Work?!
The Prolific uses the Oxford 911 chipset so I am intrigued to why yours does not work. Have you tried both firewire ports? Is it recognised in the OS? What type of drive is in the enclosure?
Huh? No, my entire point is that this is *not* the Oxford 911. Prolific is now making its own ide< ->firewire chipset called the PL3507 which is being used in the case that I have. This is NOT an Oxford 911. The case is the Speeze “Metal Gear Box” — Yes, it’s somewhat recognized by Linux, but not completely. The link that I posted from LKML has the details of what happens when you try to use it.
I also found this reference to the PL3507 under Linux which is not encouraging at all.
Under Windows XP I have a lot of problems with this device too.
However, it seems to be connected with the machine/firewire card.
On 2 machines it runs smoothless, on an other machine I tried running it with one firewirecard and it seems to work OK untill I transfer large files to it, then the drivelight remains on and I get the error that writing to the device has failed. So I switch it on and off, and it works again. If I repeat the switching on and off enough eventually I succeed writing the file (4Gb under NTFS)
With an other firewirecard, I turn it on, and then Windows doesn’t even bother to list it in the mountlist, “because there were too many errors” and I heven’t even written or read a single file on that drive.
BTW, don’t bother with the problem of overheating.
I also noticed the overheating problem and did something about it.
I built in a small fan, and now the drive remains cool. Doesn’t change any of the problems, although it is much better for the longevety of the drive itself
I have REALLY BIG problems with my drive. I have the dual port (USB 2 and Firewire.) Using the USB option was fatal - it locked up the computer (XP Pro) and then rebooted it! When I started the computer with the device turned on (USB again) it went past the splash screen and then just went to a black screen. When I turned the power off it finally finished the login.
Using the Firewire option was a little better, it booted up and recognized it, but when I copieda large directory to it, it stopped after a while (red light blinking) and it gave a devise error.
I am trying to return it unless someone can give me a good idea why not to!
Mine has worked fine on OS X, with OS 9 on my Blue and White Mac it will hang, and the only solution is to repeatedly unplug, and replug it until it works. After it gets working, it will continue to work without error. Surprisingly it didn’t corrupt any data! I beleive this is the same thing that Rob saw in comment #4. I expect it will lose data at some time though, so I use it only for a scratch disk. As to the cooling; I went to the machine shop at my company and drilled holes in my case for convection cooling. Therefore I too cannot return my case.
I have 3 of these drives running under mac os x.3.4 and each drive mounts and works flawlessly individually, but as soon as i daisy chain them together, Only the first drive mounts and the other 2 just spin. Allof the enclosures use the Prolific PL-3507 chipset. It is really frustrating that there is such a lack of support for this. if anybody has a solution, I’m all ears…
thanks zen
Well, the main point of this post was for PL3507 support under Linux, which still does not seem functional. Averagezen, you’re seeing those problems because each chip is supposed to have a unique identifier… but the PL3507 sets them to 000 for each one. See the two posts I linked.
Even if this post was supposed to be for Linux I am thankful to read something about this chipset as I am going to buy a FW Harddrive with that chipset. It seems to work with Mac OS X, that is what I wanted to know ;)
Sven . . . this chipset has problems on MacOS X as well. It will work fine at times. And randomly hang. Nothing brings it back except repeated plugging and unplugging (not good for the drive or the computer). It’s very frustrating. I run MacOS 10.3.5 and there’s still no joy with the PL3507. I suggest you look elsewhere (or else)!
I’m having trouble with my enclosure which contains the PL3507 chipset as well. I have to boot it 10 times for the PC to recognize it. Sometimes it actually gets it on the first try. The only support I could find is basically for Win 98. Look at thie Prolifc website link here:
http://tech.prolific.com.tw/visitor/v_filebrw_result.asp
This enclosure works OK for me both under slackware and arch linux. Kernel 2.6.9rc2. I boot the machine with the box unplugged, and after I’ve booted I just load ohci1394 and plug in the firewire cable. It works. Copying large files works as well. Only thing is that after being plugged in for a while and the drive has spun down, I have to power off and on, and plug it in again.
i just got helpd my friend buy and configure a external enclosure and (bytecc 740u2f) and it contains this annoying chipset called the 3507
and this casing is housing a 200 gb seagate
anyhow this enclosure aint werkin under osx (panther)
anysuggestions..?
i know i gotta get a new enclosure fer her but any suggestion on which one?
oh yea bytecc now say they are using the oxford 911 but un-huh they sneaky as slik shite they got these stinkin prolific chipset ones out there… becareful peeps
The 3507 enclosure I have works fine under OS X and Windows… my problem is still just Linux.
Using Mac OS 10.3.5 I find that at least one of the new 200 GB Segates installed in a BYTECC prolific 3507 FW/USB cases will not spin down at all when ejected and even when dismounted and the firewire cable unplugged. Is this a problem with the hard drive or the prolific 3507? By the way - a similar BYTECC case with an Oxford chipset does not exhibit this problem
Inquiring minds want to know.
I bought the Bytecc ME-320U2F external case and it hs the Prolific 3507 chipset in it. I have a Pioneer 107D in it. This case with that drive does not work on USB worth a damn on my system, but it at least burns on firewire with a firmware update. The only problem is, I cannot verify burns in Nero or NTI CD Maker Pro because it gives me a weird error.. something like “Cannot Mount Written Disc” in Nero. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.
Thanks.
The September 9th, 2004 firmware fixed that
http://www.ahgogo.net/ProlificFirmware.zip
“The September 9th, 2004 firmware fixed that http://www.ahgogo.net/ProlificFirmware.zip”
does this solve the daisy chain issue that i have been having? See comment 8 above
Thanks for the help
zen
Just got a Metal Gear Box with the PL3507. Filled up all 200GB and works great. Until I daisychain a DVD burner. The moment I access the DVD burner, the entire file system on my HD in the PL3507 case gets wiped out. Tested using 4 different cases with Oxford 911 and PL3507’s. Only the PL3507 cases exhibit this problem.
As of now, has anyone figured out how to make the PL3507 chips work with a Mac? I have a Poineer DVR-108 in the enclosure, and my computer tells me that burning is “not supported”. Is there any hope? I am not as computer saavy as the others on this blog, but I can learn. Thanks
I don’t really know about using the PL3507 with a burner.
What I do know, though, is that DS is a very helpful person. I finally got around to flashing my PL3507 case with the new firmware and it actually works under Linux 2.6!
Unfortunately it only works for a short while. After using it extensively for a few days, it simply stopped working and it seems I have to reboot before it works again. Sigh.
I’ve been using 1394 drives with windows for years and never had a single problem until now.. all previous 1394 bridges have been oxford 911 and 912.. I bought 2 new 1394/usb2 combos ME-320U2F enclosures from Monoprice.com and found they contained PL3507 bridges.. I didn’t think much about it until I started having problems with corrupted drives. I’ve had to recover both drives, twice in the past 3wks.. Today one of the drives isn’t being detected by W2k or Wxp.. Which why Im here.. Sorry to steer the dialog away from the topic.. But if you’re having trouble with PL3507s I think the problem lies within its poor design.
BTW these drives weren’t daisy chained.
Yeah, at this point I think we all can agree that there’s a good reason the Oxford 9xx’s are pretty much standard. The PL3507 just sucks.
Looks like there’s new firmware out for the PL3507. You can download it directly at:
http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm
You can read more about it at:
http://www.bustrace.com/products/delayedwrite.htm
Read the very latest entries at the bottom, dated Jan. 3rd, 2005. I haven’t tried them yet myself since I boxed up the case and stored it away as useless, but I’ll be bringing it back out now!
Those who try it, please update us on your experience.
Was experiencing strange problems with this drive, not mounting for days at a time and then reappearing (otfen with several power cycles and or firewire cable config change of some sort).. then I upgraded to Panther 10.3.7 and the dirve became corrupted about a week later. Just opened it up and found the PL3507 inside. Was able to boot with norton 7 and fix the drive enough to get the data off.
At least know I know that there is a good chance that the 120 GB Hitachi drive inside is ok.
Cheers
Prolific PL-3507 Firmware
Problems with a Gigapod enclosure
(chip inside has a label that says: PL-3507 04284C)
Is this the “version C”??
Drive is 7200rpm 20G UDMA4, plugged as master
1394test.exe works OK on a slow machine
(200mhz), Berkin Firewire, W2K professional SP2
1394test.exe stops at 50% on a Dell
660Mhz, Adaptec duo connect (AUA-3121/EFIGS), W2K Prof SP4
Tried updating Firwire:
On the slow machine, had to connect the box thru USB1 connection.
Romburner 214 says:
rom size: 32kb
FW: ver2004.04.07.108
Vendor: 0X02
Chipid: 0X2D
Checksum: 9B27
But udate attempt ends up with: can’t access the chip (be rejected!)
Romburner 204B read ok and gives same info,
Write attemps seems ok, but does not change anything:
same version etc when read back even after a complete power down reset.
What did I do wrong???
I have 3 Mobile enclosures. All get your same result. I tried USB2 and USB1… no luck.
Please notify me if you find an answer. Thanks
james Klahn
The firmware update definitely did the trick. i am glad they finally fixed that crap, as it was really starting to drive me nuts. i have a 120gb hdd in a compusa metal gear box that i use for mass storage, so it would literally take 5 or six tries for some of my folders. now it all transfers with no problem. thanks for the tip. you are all my hero!
-alex
How have people gotten around the “BE Rejected” problem when trying to upgrade?
I also encounter the “be rejected” problem when i try to flash my hd enclosure’s rom. Please help.
I’ve not seen it at all so I don’t know what to tell you guys. Maybe they’re the “revision a” chipsets that don’t take firmware updates?
How to update pl-3507 on MAC osx?? my pc doesn’t have firewire or highspeed usb and my mac doesn’t seem to see the Prolific pl-3507 firmware downloads from
http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm
Thanks
P
Even lowspeed USB should be enough to install the firmware, I would imagine. I’ve installed the firmware from under Windows, sorry.
RE: #22, Visit xlr8yourmac.com to learn how to use PatchBurn to set up the drive for use in OS X. (Or install inside the Mac’s case if it accepts it for native support.)
For me, the Prolific chipset worked fine with a 200G (186 formatted) HD, but when I put a 250G drive in, it reports it as 896PB (PetaBytes - a VERY large number which the OS doesn’t support.) Thrilling. Tried it a second time with removal of FW cable and power and now it works. I wonder if they write some config to NVRAM that needs to be re-written and read at power up.
Anyone know if the Rev A/B/C is available in the data the chipset reports to the OS? I didn’t see any letters. (Rev is blank)
I actualy have a Oxford 911 enclosure. I am using Xandros on the Linux 2.6 core. I have no problems with the “master” drives, but cannot Linux to recognize the “slave” position drives (Enclosure has 2 Oxford 911 bridges, each bridge has a master and a slave). I read on one of the newsgroups that the 2. 6 core has problems with firewire and the people had an easier time with the 2.4 core. Any ideas?
Through the research I have done on the PL-3507 Chipset it appears to be far from reliable. I contacted the manufacturer of the Metal Gear Substance Box and was told it would support up to a 400gb drive. I have had my data corrupted 5 straight days in a row with 2 different enclosures and 2 different maxtor 250gb hard drives using the Firewire connection. Supposedly the usb connection is more reliable, but luckily I have not made any mods to this enclosure yet, so I am going to return the piece of junk for my money back. As many have stated the Oxford 911 chipset is more reliable, I think I will check into this option for myself. As for the firmware flash above I checked and have the B chipset. I flashed my enclosure and tried for the last time to repartition and copy data. It failed to resolve the issues.
Hi, I found out that this device makes big problems with WinXP+SP2. It works fine with WinXP+SP1 only.
I have the Metal Gear enclosure (P/N 1912) and it seems to work fine under OS 10.3.8 using a Maxtor 7200 160GB HDD on Firewire 400. No corruptions or problems yet, however I cannot boot from the disk. It shows as bootable and all permissions have been run and all I get is a blank screen.
Prolific PL3507, software version 10483 and the Firmware version is blank.
Are there any firmware updates for this device under OS X? I actually like it other than not being able to boot from it.
Thanks
Tim
Just an update to all this, borrowed friends PC laptop and tried to update firmware via USB, but I got an error message that says (surprise!) “Can’t access chip (be rejected!)”. Any info appreciated…how can we tell which revision chip we have?
My firmware Ver 2004.07.27.127, Vendor ID OXFF, Chip ID OXFF
Also, there is a Dec 04 and Jan 05 firmware update out now at the prolific website. The 3507 stuff is on page 12.
http://tech.prolific.com.tw/visitor/v_filebrw_result.asp
later
Tim
I have a Metal Gear Box with the Prolific PL-3507 chip. After 3 drive corruptions in 4 days, I had written it off as a bad investment. On 3/12/05, I flashed my box to ver 2004.12.09.200 released 01/04/2005 with ROMWriter ver 2.2.1 via USB cable, both from the same site referenced by Tim(41.). You have to flash using USB! ROMWriter will not find the box via firewire.
So far, I’ve tried to make it fail and it has worked flawlessly. I’m using WinXP Pro w/sp2, firewire port, and a WD 120Gb hd. I’ve transferred large amounts of data, left it on all night(the box got really warm), constantly stopped it and restarted it, and ran movies directly from it(really warm again). I think the problem’s finally been resolved with this firmware update. It’s only been 5 days but I’m slowly regaining my confidence in it. One more corruption and I’m done with it, firewire wise. I haven’t tried the USB yet.
Hope this helps everyone! Good Luck!
So, Julian, what’s your opinion of the case at this point? I just got one after obviously doing too little ressearch. Should I just return it, or is it actually usable under linux after the firmware upgrade? I’m running kernel 2.6.11.
If the vote is to return it, does anyone know of a GOOD firewire case to use with linux?
Well, if you’re just going to use it every now and then it might be ok. If you’re at all serious about longterm use, though, I’d return it and find something with an Oxford chipset in it.
I can use my case for a long while without issue, and then all of a sudden it will stop working and I’ll have to reboot before it will work again. Loading and unloading various modules and turning the case off and on don’t seem to help.
Glad to hear that last Firmware 2004.12.09.200 did the trick for the
happy (few ?) who managed to pass over the “can’t access the chip (be rejected!)”
Now what could I do? I would like to be able to burn whatever firmware
Prolific releases..
How to find out what chip version I have: if it’s version A, everything
becomes clear. Label on chip says: PL-3507 04284C
Similar question, how do I know which version of prolific chip I have?
I came up with the following info:
Manufacturer: Prolific PL3507 Combo Device
Model: (1394 ATAPI,Rev 1.00)
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
OS9 Drivers: No
Speed: 400 Mb/sec Speed
Unit Spec Id: 24734
Firmware Revision:
Unit Software Version: 10483
“can’t access the chip (be rejected!)”?
Use the 2.0.4 ROMWriter instead of 2.2.1:
http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm
(At least, that’s what another wesite suggested, and it seemed to work fine…)
I have the same problem as Marc (#28).
My chip is printed with PL-3507 LF04294C.
When I connect to it using USB 1.1 from Win 2K
I can read the firmware version using the
later ROMWriter versions (2004.04.07.106)
but cannot flash it (”be rejected”).
Although ROMwriter 2.0.4 appears to work, it does not actually change the firmware. If you enable verification, it fails to verify the update.
If this is not version “C” of the PL-3507, but
rather version “A” (who knows for sure?) the Prolific
web site FAQ says:
The PL-3507 Chip A version does not include In-Circuit Programming (ICP) feature for online firmware update. The only way you can update the firmware is to remove (de-solder) the Flash chip from the PCB (circuit board) and reprogram it using an external EEPROM/Flash programming machine. You can download the firmware hex file from this website. After updating the firmware, you then solder back the Flash chip to the PCB.
Here are two discussions of the flash update failures for what are apparently version “C” chips like ours. One deals with the CompUSA combo drive enclosure implementation of the chip (which I have), the other does not specify the make of enclosure. Both describe hardware issues that seem to prevent a user from accessing the ICP (firmware update) feature of the version “C” chips.
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=31559
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?p=957178#post957178
There is also a PL-3507 flash compatibility chart here
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=25140&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=150
which someone may be able to interpret.
Anyone having success with flashing a CompUSA SKU# 306103 with a chip
ID like 0X2D or marked 04294C…I’d appreciate hearing how you accomplish it.
Thanks in advance.
Lazarus
Just a thought on you not being able to use your DVD Drive. The issue may not be the chips, it could be that your drive is not supported by Mac. There is a crack fortunatly to get your drive to work on OS X. I installed a new Pioneer burner on my old G4 with a software called PATCHBURN. Check it out. It worked for me. It basically hacks into the system and you can add your burners drivers to the ’safe’ list.
Jason
I have a generic external box and was having the same “be rejected!” crap, so I used the 2.0.4 ROM Writer and the latest firmware. But when I read the ROM again, it had the same firmware number. Checked the Prolific web site http://www.prolific.com.tw and it said to make sure you turn off the drive and restart it to see the latest firmware. I did and it seems to have loaded the latest one. Good luck to others!
Long story short, you need to upgrade the firmware for your Firewire enclosure, in particularly if you have a Prolific 3507 chipset.
The problem is that they only accept up to 64KB data block transfers because Windows is not supposed to send any larger than that, but when it does happen, that’s when you get the delayed write failure.
Glad I found this. I have the the 3507 in a generic enclosure. It worked most the time with my dual layer DVD+-RW. Upgrading Nero and the DVD rom firmware helped, but it would still hang filling the 2mb buffer once and a while. After applying the 12/9/2004 firmware: fw_pl3507B_d120904.zip
with the ICP: rw_pl3507_icp_v221.zip
I downloaded from:
http://tech.prolific.com.tw/visitor/v_filebrw_result.asp
I haven’t had a problem since.
Thanks!
Rich
I had also serious problems with a prolific PL3507 device and a 200GB WD Caviar harddisk. Used PQmagic for formatting and tries both FAT-32 and NTFS but after some hours the data just “evaporated” and the disk volume went unreadable or “not formatted”
Took out the harddrive, and put an old 33GB drive in place, which ran fine in the prolific box. Then hooked up the 200GB on a spare IDE port in my desktop and after reformatting, it too ran fine. Then finally I placed the 200GB again inside the prolific box and guess what: Ir runs fine until now. Left a 700Mb divx movie playing in loop for an entire day without any troubles.
So anyone of you having troubles with USB/IDE interfaces, take this advice: DO NOT FORMAT A NEW HARDDRIVE USING THE USB/FIREWIRE INTERFACE. Instead, temporarily hook up the drive on a regular IDE port for formatting. If you don’t have a free IDE port, just temporarily disconnect your CDROM drive. You may need to put the drive in “slave” mode with the jumper. You don’t really need to mount the disk in the PC case, I just left it dangling on the side…
Newbie comment/question:
I’m a photographer. I took some wedding pics and put them on a Maxtor 160GB HDD in a generic external case. When I click to remove harware, it says it is a Prolific PL-3507 Combo Drive… v1.00. The other day the drive wouldn’t work and I noticed it was pretty hot to touch. I let it cool down, and it still didn’t work. My OS is Win XP Pro. The drive was initally attached via firewire. It was changed to USB 2.0 with no luck. Drive is recognized, but when I try to open it, I get “G:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” I downloaded “EasyRecovery DataRecovery Trial Edition” from http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware. This scanned the drive and showed the important picture folders were still there, I just can’t get to them without their $200 upgrade. I tried to update the PL-3507 firmware (v 2.04) based on previous recs above, and when I click on the “Read ROM…” button it says it is getting the file information, but my system locks up (mouse won’t work and I have to reboot - I waited about 10 min for it to find the information but it never did). I never saw the “can’t access the chip…” message.
I really need those pictures - any suggestions? Thanks.
Bill,
I’d suggest just getting a new firewire enclosure. Take the hard drive out of the PL-3507 enclosure and put it in the new one. Hopefully you’ll have better luck getting the pictures off that way.
Oh, and make sure the new enclosure is an Oxford 9xx instead of a Prolific! :)
Thank you, Julian, for the response.
I did a search for an “Oxford 911 enclosure” on Google and got all sorts of options, varying in (quality?)/price significantly. I am much more concerned about quality than price, so would you give me your recommendation(s) as to which one I should choose? Also, once I figure out how to open the current one, is there much more to it than just switching the cables from the current enclosure to the new one?
Hello,
I bought a Bytecc ME-320 USB2.0 enclosure and installed a Samsung DVD/CDRW burner. I dont know what chipset is in the enclosure (how do I find that out). Also, I have an issue that when I connect to a laptop with USB1.1, the applications freezes until I removed the USB connection. I dont get this problem if I connect to a laptop with USB2.0. Is this a common problem with PL-3507 (if that indeed is the chipset)? Can someone give me some ideas on how to resolve this please. Thanks.
Joe,
Are you using Windows, Linux, Mac OS X… ?
In general you find the device information. In Mac OS X, go to Utilities/Disk Utility and click on the enclosure. It usually has the chipset name there. If not there, then in System Profiler you can click on “Firewire” to see Firewire device information. In Linux, you’ll need to look at ‘dmesg’ or else ’sudo tail -f /var/log/messages’ and take a look at what it says when the device is being connected.
I don’t really use Windows, so I don’t know how to find it in Windows XP.
Bill,
I haven’t completed a recovery yet since I just lost 3 drives (all with the Prolific chipset), but I have used getdataback from http://www.runtime.org to at least scan the drives and it appears it has found all the data. Like I said, I haven’t actually copied the data off the drive yet, but getdataback at least let me view several of the files to see if they were in tact and they were. I’m hoping to finish a recovery tonight to see what happens.
Got a generic enclosure with a PL3507 LF04244C chip, containing a 160 Gb Maxtor DiamondMax10, partitioned at 100+60 Gb. Worked absolutely fine on both USB and Firewire for a couple of weeks, then decided it had had enough; one of the partitions worked fine, but the other: “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.”. Spent two days now testing various things, retrieved my files using GetDataBack (good program), tested HDD with PowerMax (No problems found), ran a full low-level format with MaxBlast and re-initiated/partitioned the drive again. Installed XP patch for 1394 devices (I have no SPs). As soon as I rebooted, both partitions came up with “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.”
So I did a bit of browsing, found this site amongst others, and thought I’d try a firmware upgrade using files from http://tech.prolific.com.tw/visitor/v_filebrw_result.asp and http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm. Wouldn’t work on Firewire, so used USB. ROMWriters 2.2.1 and 2.1.4 won’t work (even though the installed firmware version is 2004.04.07.106, which they are supposedly compatible with), so I ended up using 2.0.4. Problem is, NONE of the .hex files (from 0422B to 0219B) will install - they run fine until verification, then: ‘ROM code verification error’, BANG! back to square one. Great.
So, I guess it’s time to buy a new enclosure. Problem is, the ones I’ve looked at don’t specify which chipset they use - and there’s no way I’m going to risk getting another PL3507. It’s actually truly unbelievable that this chipset is still on the market. What should have been a simple 160 Gb external HDD in a case has now become a bloody nightmare which has taken me 2 days of work to get precisely nowhere in terms of a fix…
Anyway, I’m not asking for answers, just thought I’d share my experience for any readers. My tip? DON’T GET AN ENCLOSURE WITH A PROLIFIC PL3507 CHIPSET, IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY!
Thank you for listening/reading
I bought a Zynet HD-D5-U2 (with no firewire, only USB2).
I also bought a Seagate Barracuda 200gb hard drive, that doesn’t work together with the case. I contacted the ones who sold it to me but they just say that it is a “compability problem” with Barracuda drives.
So, I heard about something called firmware, that maybe can fix it, so the case works together with Barracuda drives.
I don’t know anything about firmware or “flashing”, and I really would need some help with it, ’cause I want the things to work when I’ve payed for it.
Please answer my question by mailing to:
timmy.isaksson@edu.laholm.se
Excuse my English. I’m Swedish.
I have an external MetalGear Box with the Prolific 3507 chipset and a Maxtor 250GB Ultra HD installed connected via Firewire to an iMac G5 Rev B. running Tiger 10.4.1
The drive seems to work without problems as far as reading/writing goes and is ‘relatively’ quiet in operation.
However, I notice that although I have set the computer to spin down the Hard Drives (when possible) under System Preferences, the external Drive (Proflific) NEVER completely spins down on its own.
Only when I explicitly put the whole computer system to sleep does the external HD spin down to a complete stop. Otherwise, it still sounds as though it’s spinning. There is no fan in the case, so I know the noise that I hear is not from a fan and must therefore be the hard drive still moving. Also, when I shut the computer system down, the external HD spinning noise reduces in volume(speed??) but does not stop completely like it does if I put the computer system to sleep explicitly.
In contrast, I have a LaCie external firewire drive that will spin down on its own (like it should).
I’m not sure what I can do about trying to get the drive to spin down on its own. Is it a hard drive mechanism problem, in which case it’s maxtor that I have to talk to in order to solve the issue, or is it the Prolific chipset that’s not letting/setting the hard drive energy settinsg properly? Any ideas?
Thanks!
Bill,
You might try search and recover from iolo to recover your data. $40 at compusa. I bought a copy (they had a $20 rebate) and haven’t had a chance yet to try it.
they have a free trial at:
http://www.iolo.com/downloads.cfm
This controller doesn’t work properly on a Macintosh either. I can’t boot from ANY firewire drive as long as this obviously untested piece to Taiwanese junk (DYNAMIC SYSTEM ELECTRONICS CORP /Zynet Polar Hd-D5-U2FW/Prolific PL3507 Combo Device/WDC WD25 00JB-55FUA0) is attached to the bus. Just wasted a whole day on this. Nothing in their FAQ about booting. I wonder if they have ever heard about booting from a firewire drive. Also, the case got abnormally hot when it remained in this failed state till morning. It is usually just luke warm (like your forehead when you’ve got the flu) but it became almost too hot to hold.
My “Metal Gear Box” with Prolific chipset did upgrade to the latest firmware, but still would corrupt my Seagate 160gb drive. (Even if formatted in a good, new Adaptec USB enclosure, it would be corrupted right away in the metal gear box, when first copy data either with USB or Firewire.)
But, so far, it looks like the enclosure is working though with an 80gb seagate drive.
Oddly enough, I put the 160gb Seagate in an ADS Pyro Oxford 911 enclosure, and after working fine for a few weeks, it is corrupted! I did format it in the ADS enclosure. I would suspect the drive itself is bad, except that it wouldn’t work for one minute in the Prolific enclosure, and worked for a while in the Oxford one.
The ADS website says you can use a drive larger than 130gb but only access the first 127gb. That seemed true til corruption. I’ve got a 60gb Maxtor I’ll try out in the ADS Oxford 911 enclosure.
>This controller doesn’t work properly on a Macintosh either. I can’t boot from ANY firewire drive as long as this obviously untested piece to Taiwanese junk (DYNAMIC SYSTEM ELECTRONICS CORP /Zynet Polar Hd-D5-U2FW/Prolific PL3507 Combo Device/WDC WD25 00JB-55FUA0) is attached to the bus. Just wasted a whole day on this.
For what its worth Richard, I have two external boxes which i use with a current G5 iMac 20″, which contain Prolific PL3507 bridges. One , which currently houses Pioneer DVR-109 burner, has no problems at all. It comes up with the following in System profiler:
(1394-ATAPI rev1.10):
Manufacturer: Prolific PL3507 Combo Device
Model: 0×1
GUID: 0×50770500071002
The other (which currently houses an LG 4163 burner) has had many problems with failed burns and sudden disappearance etc.
It appears in System Profiler as:
(1394 ATAPI,Rev 1.00):
Manufacturer: Prolific PL3507 Combo Device
Model: 0×1
GUID: 0×50770500005124
(note the different ATAPI revisions)
When I swap the burners between the enclosures the problems are always with the “Rev 1.00″ enclosure, so its pretty clearly a problem with it. I’m assuming I’ll eventually be able to resolve the problem with a firmware upgrade, but haven’t worked out how to do this on a Mac yet.
But the one with Rev1.1 works fine.
Cheers
Rod
I have a unique issue with a PL3507 drive that has not been addressed in any other thread. I purchased a 250Gb “SImpletech” brand external firewire/USB drive, which Disc Utility identifies as a PL3507. I use a MAC G4 15″ Powerbook and mainly run audio apps such as Pro Tools. This drive works fine as a storage device - I can transfer data to and from with no problem, even daisy chained through another drive. I always use firewire.
The problem is in trying to run Pro Tools sessions from the external drive. As soon as I try to play back any audio from the drive, I get a DAE error in Pro Tools (”can’t get audio from drive fast enough”) and have to force quit the app. After that the drive directory is corrupted and no longer recognized by the MAC (”drive contains no volues readable by MAC OSX”).
This is a consistent occurance that can be repeated every time. Luckily I only lost one batch of data that way, having most stuff backed up somewhere else.
I’m going to try updating firmware and run my experiments again to seed what happens. Keep you posted.
Tried downloading and runnign the ROMwriter program from prolific site (ran on VPC on MAC) and the firmware is already the latest version. Updated anyway and tried to run PT again with no success. I guess there’s a reason Digidesign only approves the Oxford 911. Maybe I’ll look into a new enclosure.
Yeah, new enclosure is the best bet.
By the way, it’s “Mac”, short for “Macintosh”, not “MAC” as in “Medium Access Control”. There’s nowhere in the operating system where it refers to itself as “MAC”.
Hi,
I think I am having problems along the same lines (PL3507/MacOsX/nightmare!!)
I just bought myself a Maxtor 200GB HD (6L200P0) and a SAFECOM firewire caddy (SF-35CAF).
I’m running 10.4 on a G3 ibook and want to create a bootable version of OSX as my internal HD is just too small.
I opted for external rather than upgrading internal drive as it just seemed too much hassle to take the ibook apart and too expensive for a big 2.5″ HD.
My machine recognises the drive and opens Disk Utility to ‘initialize’ the drive.
DIsk Utility reckons the drive is 1.1TB and gives an internal/external error when I try to partition it!
I can’t even get the drive to be mounted in any way.
System profiler recognises it and says that the caddy has the PL-3507 chipset. Perhaps here lies the problem, judging by above posts.
Has anyone got any tips. I really don’t want to fork out for another enclosure with Oxford 911…
Aaaaarrgh! :-)
Oh God.
I imported a Kingwin case and it comes with this horrifying chip.
I am on Mac OS X Tiger, it recognizes my external HD flawlessly and boots from it, no problem.
The problem is, it is a 5.25 enclosure! I wanted to use it with my Samsung DVD Burner, but instead I have to connect it to the the case that used to store my HD (Macally) for it to work! The Prolific case even makes the Macally case work by chaining, but it doesnt recognize my damn DVD Burner…. Support from Kingwin has been horrible.
Its also (as someone mentioned) a PL3507 Combo Device rev 1.10 with Firmware Revision 0×12804
18 November 2005:
I have just purchased two SumVision HDD USB/Firewire enclosures with the PL3507 chipset from SVP.
In one is a Maxtor 200GB drive. In the other a Maxtor 250GB drive.
I use USB (I do have Firewire on my IBM A31p Thinkpad, but no firewire cable so can’t test) and have been using both enclosures for a couple of days.
TOUCH WOOD I have not yet had a problem with either unit. I use USB 2.0
I have not tried Firewire, or daisy chaining the drives, but two cases on one USB2.0 hub seems fine!
I have a DVD RW in another USB 2.0 enclosure but not sure of chipset. Works fine along side other two PL3507 units.
The cases were both supplied with firmware ‘2004_10_06_174′ which seemed OK. To be on the safe side however, I upgraged both boxes to use firmware ‘fw_pl3507B_d110904′ using ‘ROMWriter ICP 2.2.0′
Keeping my fingers crossed…
Most of the problems seem to be with using the PL3507 for FireWire, not USB2.
I’m looking at the prolific firmware page, and it lists prolific chipset revisions? Does anybody know how to determine this? so the correct firmware could be chosen.
I’m working on Mac G5 Dual 2Ghz, under Tiger and i have a 300 Mb external HD by Prolific.
it’s never been working with Firewire, but it works fine with the USB2.0 port. if i connect it via firewire nothing happens but the system profiler tells me that the device is unknown, therefore unmountable.
last week i’ve plugged the same HD to a G4 800 Mhz under Panther and it worked fine via Firewire and USB2.0.
still no news on Prolific website.
does anyone know anythig about it?
I have got a cheapo box with a PL3507 in it and it works fine in FireWire with Linux 2.6 on a laptop and not so fine on a desktop with a different HD in it and a different chipset.
But most problems with external boxes are because of insufficient power: the power brick can only supply a maximum of 2 amperes of current, but many/most drives draw almost 3 amperes when they start up and start spinning.
For example of common 250GB ATA drives, the Hitachi and Maxtor draw 1.7A and 1.8A, but Seagate and Western digital draw 2.7A and 2.8A, which is not good. A summary here:
http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/anno05-4th.html#051226c
Also, many firewire host adapter/device adapted combinations do not support large transfers, or parallel operation. Have a look at the ’sbp2_max_sectors’ and ’sbp2_serialize_io’ parameters of the ’sbp2′ driver module.
Also, avoid using USB1/USB2 mass storage access whenever possible, as the protocol and almost all the USB adapter chips have serious error signaling and recovery issues, so when everything works, fine, but otherwise… Firewire is a lot better for mass storage.
I own a Bytecc enclosure with a Prolific 3507 and I have had many problems with this thing. There was a point when I thought that it was working fine so I left it running in my XP system and was running Agent Usenet reader with it and one day I found that my drive with all my files that I needed was corrupt and unreadable in XP. I have tried many programs to get the stuff back even the great free “PC Inspector” file recovery program and I am unable to get most of the larger files. My advice is to stay far away from anything with the Prolific 3507 chipset. I must admit that I think the problem also has to do with the power supply that comes with the Bytecc Drive because I am having issues with an Oxford 911 controller from bytecc also, the drive spins down for no reason in the middle of a read/write(Dangerous) . If you just bought a Prolific chipset enclosure , take it back, especially if it is a Bytecc.
I recently purchased an Adaptec ACS-200 which has a Genesys(USB2/1394a) (Generic) chipset that works well with my MAC and XP when using Digidesign’s Pro Tools recording software. Drives don’t power down for no reason when using the Adaptec.
I bought the Vantec NexStar 2 external enclosure (3.5″) with a Maxtor 300GB 7200 RPM hard drive.
Out of the box, the USB ports worked fine. I bought a 6-4 pin IEEE cable to connect it to my laptop via IEEE, and then started getting all these random corruptions of my hard drive.
It seems USB was fine, but IEEE would crap out my hard drive. I would have to format it to be able to access it again. The NexStar 2 uses the Prolific controller which seems to be the culprit.
I ran the latest firmware updates from the link given above (http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm), and so far everything looks good. I won’t put anything critical on this drive for a while until I can be assured it won’t go corrupt again.
I recently bought two Prolific PL-3507C Firewire/USB-2 cases. One 5-1/4 which I’m using with a Pioneer DVR-110D (RPC-1 Patched to DVR-110) and a 3-1/2 case in which I installed a Western Digital Caviar 320GB. I’m using Mac OS X 10.4.4 and haven’t had a problem with neither so far apart from the fact that the hard drive will not spin down when I unmount it or when I put my PowerBook G4 to sleep (As it happens with my other Oxford 911 case). I also patched the PL-3507C (d112805) using VirtualPC.
http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=44
The upgrade will only work using the USB cable (Not Firewire). And you have to remember to unmount the drive and power cycle it for the new version to show on the upgrade software.
Prolific on System Profiler (After firmware upgrade)
PL-3507C Drive:
Manufacturer: Prolific
Model: 0×1
GUID: 0×50770E0120168B
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
PL-3507C Drive Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0×10483
Unit Spec ID: 0×609E
Firmware Revision: 0×12804
Product Revision Level:
Cheers!
I picked up a USB/Firewire combo Metal Gear Box at Compusa last week. The chip says Eon on it, but it’s a prolific 3507. I installed a WD250GB as a backup device for my (older) Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop with USB1.1 and the Texas Instruments Firewire controller (running XP Pro). It works great, but with all these derogatory posts about the Prolific chipset I thought I’d better make sure the firmware was up to date.
I just wanted to share here that it was very easy and went without a hitch. First of all, the “newsguy” links on this page are outdated. Go to Prolific’s download site linked just above in Gustavo’s post. Everything you will need is there.
Your chip version will be evident upon running the installer, don’t worry about whether you have A,B,C, or D. Begin by running installer V204. If nothing shows up (or you get an error messgae) when you press the Read ROM button, you either have chip A, or firmware later than 4-10-03 already installed. No problem, just run the later installer V23. If nothing shows up again you have chip A which can not be flashed. Otherwise, you’ll see which firmware version is currently installed. Mine came with a 12-9-04 version, but since the readme file enclosed with the 11-28-05 version shows three updates since then, I decided to go ahead and flash the latest.
(For Windows XP users, anyway) The process goes like this:
1) With computer running and enclosure unplugged from computer, power on the enclosure.
2) Run the installer.
3) Plug the enclosure into your USB port and give it a minute to show up in My Computer.
4) Press the Read Rom button and you’ll see which firmware revision is already installed. (Note: If it’s older than 4-10-03, you’ll need to flash the 9-22-04 upgrade first and then run the newer installer and repeat the process to bring it up to current).
5) Press the Load File button and load the appropriate hex file. As soon as the file loads, the checksum will change (to 5748 for the 11-28-05 firmware) and it will begin erasing and then rewriting and finally it will save a backup of your old version.
6) With installer still open, safely remove hardware, unplug from USB port on computer and power down the enclosure for ten seconds or so.
7) Power enclosure back up, plug into computer and wait until the drive shows up in MY Computer again.
8) Press Read ROM and watch as the checksum stays the same (it was updated when you loaded the file), but the version will change to what you just flashed.
Can’t vouch for the long-term durability of this chip, but I’ve now moved over 20GB over the firewire connection, including files larger than 1GB, and have had no problems. Good Luck.
Hello, i have a ME-910 usb 2.5 inch enclosure drive with a 1.3gb harddisk.
Under windows it works fine but in linux i get usb reset errors…
But i managed to update it with the ROMWriter2.2 RS32.exe and PL3507-1109B.hex
That is the lastest version I have.
So im going to check if it works fine when I’m back home, if not, I try other rom’s. and if i am desperate i’m going to use the firewire connection with my linux box…
Oh yeah, i removed R72 resistor and i tested the drive with 1394test.exe to check if it has firewire delay errors, non detected.
I tested it with the USB cable though…
Hi there,
I have recently (arrived today) acquired a external USB2/IEEE1394 5.25″ enclosure from Envizage Solutions Ltd through Ebay. At just over 17 quid inclusive of shipping, I can’t complain.
It has a PL-3507 Chip, the little PCB board claims revision B. Using a laptop with WinXP on it, I updated the firmware to latest on this enclosure, then installed a Plextor DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive in it. Ubuntu 5.10 (kernel 2.6.12) struggles with this chip, it sees the drive, but is not able to read/write CD’s using the enclosure.
Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Flight4 pre-release, kernel 2.6.15-16) however can use this enclosure fine. I got 3MB/s write-speed (20x) sustained, and checksum was fine afterwards.
Only tested USB1/USB2 attachment of enclosure, have no FireWire to test with yet.
Thumbs up from me. :)
So you’re saying that it works with 2.6.15-16? what version is that exactly because i cant find 2.6.15-16
@ Marctraider
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com) in their upcoming release (Dapper Drake, version 6.04) have a 2.6.15 kernel with version string 2.6.15-16. There is a -17 since a day or two ago. I would expect vanilla kernel 2.6.15.6 from kernel.org to work quite well as well.
/A
A’ight I will see if it works… soon
As I am messing around with a few PL3507 pcbs (don’t know what box one came out of) I can fill you in on some more info which might interest you guys (having some firmware and electronics background):
The typical PL3507 pcb arrangement is the PL3507 itself, it’s 12MHz XTAL, the Firewire transceiver chip (Agere FW802B) with it’s 24.576 XTAL, the 512kbit (64KB) flash, a +12V+5V regulator chip, a 5V to 3.3V regulator IC (the PL3507 accepts 3.3V as input and inside pulls it down to 2.5) and a protection diode. Some pcbs have 2 firewire ports connected to the FW802 some only one, but the chip supports 2 anyhow.
The device can be flashed only through the USB port as the ICP works only through USB. Unforunately, some manufacturers have decided to put a write protection jumper (a 0 ohm SMD resistor) on by default, which kind of sucks. If you know what the OEM of your Prolific box is and have this problem, then you should contact them and get them to tell you what number the jumper is (R something) you need to remove.
Also FYI these flashes have an option to write protect permanently an 8K boot block through 5 software instructions. Once this has been done, you can never erase the device completely again (you can erase all the remaining 56KB though). So if they do this, it sucks even more.
If you are asking yourself why not jumper the Write Enable pin number 31 of the flash to ground to enable the flash permanently: BAD Idea, as this is not how you do things with these devices. If you permanently tie WE to GND the eeprom won’t read out anything anymore as it is waiting for a write sequence indefinately. The WE line is controlled by the PL3507 and has usually an external 10K pullup to keep it always high and when needed, it can be brought LOW but only by the PL3507 when instructed to by the firmware (ICP routine).
So, what happens is that when the USB writer ICP routine starts, it checks if it can access the flash in write mode and the PL3507 routine checks one if it’s GPIO ports to see how it is set (high or low) which in return means that it can or cannot write to the flash. This happens before any real write routine. So you need to know what GPIO port is used to do this and no I haven’t found it on mine yet (if it’s just that). What also can happen (but I doubt it) is that the ICP checks the flash to see if the bootblock has been protected (chip identification) and if so, returns the error - but this would mean that the bootblock needs to be reflashed with every firmware upgrade.
So if you have 2 identical boxes (someone had) and one doesn’t flash reporting the usual error, look for any differences in Resistors (labeled R with a number) near/under the PL3507 chip. At first glance they may look identical, but these smd resistors are small so you might miss one. The device that FAILS to flash should HAVE ONE MORE than the device that flashes or have one in a different position (instead of pullup it is pulldown).
Also, for the guys that are having the erratic detection problems, I have found this to be connected to the external Power supply unit (the small switching PSU): I had a box which was detected 1 every approx 5 attempts and as I had another identical box I simply switched PSUs and voila’s, it worked first go. I checked the voltage with my DMM and I found that when switching the device on (it had a 120GB Maxtor HD in it) the voltage would drop under 5V (4.8!) and that would create the “brown out” on the circuit. Always check the 5V line as the 12V depend on the 5V feedback regulation in switching PSUs. If the 5V line it out by more than .1 V, it’s no good.
So if you’re having these erratic detection problems, try another PSU if you can. Some boxes come with 1 Voltage input line (12 or more Volts) and some with a dual input (12V and 5V).
If the guys at prolific respond to my inquiries as to what GPIO port they use for this write protection (or if I get any other info) I will post it.
Luke
Just to update the situation, I read the contents of the 24c02 eeprom and it’s all empty except the last 2 bytes at location 0xFE and 0xFF which are 0×55 and 0xAA. This eeprom should contain the ID (MAC) of the Firewire adapter as reported in the firmware update txts, unless they intend the large 512kbit flash. I also tried removing the flash entirely and the interface still works via USB. I also replaced the eeprom with another one which I wrote to in various locations, but the device still mounted my test HD. I wonder what this eeprom is really for…
I also sent an email to prolific support regarding the flash write protection but I got no reply. Tut tut…
Luke
I have been using an aluminum hard drive enclosure with the pl3507 chipset under OS X 10.4.x and 10.3.x i have had problems where if i do not properly unmount the drive it will fail to mount no matter how many times i unplug it or turn it off. The ONLY solution has been to take the drive out of the case and plug it directly into the IDE cable inside the computer and mount the drive.
PAIN IN THE ARSE!!! i am currently looking for a new enclosure with an oxford 911 chipset
I used the information in post #80 above to get the lastest firmware I could find which is dated November 11, 2005. I used the both the 2.20 and 2.3 Firmware updaters and followed METAL GEAR HEAD’s instructions for applying firmware updates via USB… ON A WINDOWS XP computer. Update worked both times! Prolific 3507 is in a 5.25 external case. No indication if it is an A, B or C version except for the fact that it took the latest update using the latest firmware upater which suggests it is NOT an A version from information I have read here and in the READ ME files that come with some of the firmware updates/updaters.
No you cannot update the firmware over FIREWIRE even on a PC.
You cannot even think about doing it on a MACINTOSH since there is no Firmware updater program for the MACINTOSH.
I noted that the PL 3507 I have shows 1394 ATAPI Rev. 1.00 version not Rev. 1.10.
The 1.00 version took the latest firmware and is recognized over both USB 2.0 and FIREWIRE on Windows XP computer. I was having USB 2.0 write failures with the Pioneer A109 DVD burner which is in the 5.25 external case connected to a WINDOWS computer. The firmware update has resolved those USB 2.0 issues!
For those who were having FIREWIRE issues on MACINTOSH with cases in which they have hard drives. I cannot say that these updates will correct the problems you have had. However, my MAC INTOSH G4 Dual 867 running OS X Tiger 10.4.6 (latest version) recognizes the external case over FIREWIRE… mounts and plays ANY DVD or CD in the drive. Burns disks too! It even works on MY MACINTOSH with a generic USB 2.0 PCI add-in card with VIA Chipset designed for WINDOWS which has no indication on the box or in the brief “manual” that it is compatible with MACINTOSH at all!
Update to the latest firmware you can find using a friend’s PC if you only have a MACINTOSH. Worth trying before spending more money on another external case. I was going to buy another case until I read all of the posts here regarding firmware updates.
(Problem and Solution)
I am using a Skymaster external hard disk casing (PL-3507 Chipset Rev1.10) with a 300GB Maxtor(DiamondMax) hard disk (HDD). I was continuously getting corrupted files and had to reformat the HDD. To determine what was causing the problem (external casing or HDD), I installed the HDD internally within my PC. My PC BIOS could not detect the full capacity of the hard disk. I disabled the BIOS auto HDD detection and let Window XP (Professional, Service Pack 2) detect the drive - worked perfectly. I then downloaded a registry fix (Maxtor Big Drive Enabler software patch) from Maxtor’s website. ie
https://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=960&p_sid=8kO6g35i&p_lva=#
I am now running the HDD in the external casing without a problem.
Before applying the patch, I tried using an old HDD which is only 600MB. I used this HDD without a problem in the external casing. Therefore, I don’t believe there is a problem with the PL-3507 Chipset.
Useful info form Maxtor’s web site:
“Maxtor’s Big Drive Enabler is a one step executable that enables support for drives larger than 137 Gigabytes in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1. This utility takes the guess work out of editing the Windows registry. The Big Drive Enabler fixes an operating system limitation. This utility is needed anytime a Hard Disk Drive larger than 137 GB is connected to the motherboard’s ATA bus, regardless of any system BIOS that supports 48-bit LBA”.
Hope this helps all those with a similar problem!
When buying a hard drive enclosure, make sure that firmware is available for it. Never buy an enclosure from a vendor and/or manufacturer that does not provides technical support and firmware updates. Having the most recent firmware on your enclosure assures you the greatest performance and stability with your operating system.
In general, Prolific chips have proven to be unrealiable on Macintosh systems. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is so in Windows as well. I have a cheap plastic enclosure with an Oxford chip and never had a problem with it.
Other companies make chips that work just fine but they have a hard time competing with the perceived superior quality of the Oxford’s. And most vendors use other chips in their enclosures (wich may cause a number of problems such as corrupt files, system hangs, random naps between disk transfers, etc) but avoid mentioning them by name. Ask yourself why?
So, learn your lesson. External drives are fragile creatures. Do not take any chances with them. Do your homework before you buy an enclosure. I have seen lots of bad reviews for the Prolific chips. So, be careful.
I had an external case with a Prolific chipset from Coolmax, and it gave delayed write errors under XP — even after obtaining 2 hotfixes directly from Microsoft (they refunded my support fee), and trying numerous things suggested online (partition size, swap file, etc).
This was with an Acer 620 laptop about 4 yrs old, 4-pin fw connector, latest BIOS.
With a Dell laptop, one year newer, same OS (except XP Pro instead of Home), and no hotfixes, it worked perfectly.
I changed the case to one with an Oxford 911 chipset from Addonics, and the problem changed from DWF to “sbp2 port failed to respond” messages in the Event Viewer. However the only symptoms were a 5-30 sec periodic freeze. The files copied, and were not corrupted. The freezes started occurring at the 200MB mark.
Again, the case works fine on my other Dell laptop. My guess is some problem with the fw chipset on my particular Acer. (The driver is generic T.I. from MS, I don’t have any further chipset details.)
It’s ironic - I have a blazing fast SATA-2 drive in the case, but for large file transfers, the speed is effectively halved. At least it works though.
Barry.
Okay, I’m not very experienced with this kind of thing (though I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to in the year I’ve had my stupid Bytecc case/NEC burner combo) so please forgive my relative ignorance - I don’t know if I screwed something up or what. :\
I’ve had increasing connection stability issues (and a constant whining noise that’s been getting worse) over the last few months with my NEC3550A CD/DVD burner in a ME-740U2F Bytecc case and my G4 iMac (seemed to get worse when I finally ugraded the Mac to Tiger a month ago - 10.4.6), so I followed Metal Gear Head’s handy instructions in post #80 and used a friend’s Dell laptop to update the firmware on the case. I installed the 11-28-05 firmware, and everything went as described so I assumed I was successful although no specs had changed for the case/burner in my System Profiler when I checked it afterwards. Apparently it didn’t work or didn’t help, though: when I tried burning an experimental DVD it conked out only about 25% into the burn and gave me the now usual “connection unstable” error message (using Toast 7.0.2).
I figured maybe my problem wasn’t the case after all and went searching for new firmware for the burner, which I’d last updated w/ NECflash last fall, then I noticed that for some reason the burner now shows up in Toast and in iTunes as a 3540A instead of the 3550A it actually is. I’d originally bought the 3540 last March, but RMA’d it & the Bytecc case to NewEgg when my first connection issues began a few months later; they replaced the case with the same model but the burner with the 3550, and it’s always been listed as such in Toast & iTunes until now - how could updating the case firmware change what model my Mac thinks the burner is? Did I mess something up? And does it really matter since the firmware update didn’t help my connection problems? Should I try reverting to the old firmware saved on my friend’s laptop before I return it to her? Any help would be sincerely appreciated! :)
Here’s my setup:
*”Metal Gear Box: Substance” hard drive enclosure (USB -and-FireWire)
(Prolific PL-3507 1394-ATAPI rev 1.10 IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device)
*purchased at CompUSA (Sept. 2004)
*connected via FireWire (1394)
*Western Digital 80GB hard drive (7200rpm)
*Windows XP SP2
Comments:
*No read/write failures of any kind
*No data loss
Problems:
*hard drive fails to load via Windows’s AutoPlay feature after booting up the drive after the computer
*must actually power on and off the drive several times to get it to load in Windows
*Some partitioning issue with Norton Partition Magic (2005)
Workarounds (works for me anyway):
*BOOT UP THE EXTERNAL DRIVE -BEFORE- starting up the computer itself
*In Windows XP, -ALWAYS- select the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon on the TaskBar before turning off or removing the drive
*If the computer is already on, but you want to use the external drive with this enclosure, simply turn on the enclosure and reboot the computer.
Hi there,
first, good to find all these posts. They have been some help.
I’m using a Compaq R4000 AMD64 laptop under Suse9.3. I bought a Bytecc ME740U2F combo with that infamous Prolific PL3507 chipset. The external HD is a IDE Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200rpm. It has 3 partitions: 4GB FAT, 28G, and ext3 80GB. Most serious problem up to now: terrific _slow_ writing speeds.
Questions:
1) I realize now, nowhere neither in the case nor in the ridiculous manual does the name “Bytecc” appear at all. All the rest, the shape of the case, the model reference appearing in the box, etc. look like the same Bytecc model as I’ve seen now on the web. The only place where I did see the brand name “Bytecc” is in the bill I got. Am I facing a _fake_ enclosure ? (I bought in ROT Computer, 310 College St., Toronto, ON)
2)Initially the ieee1394 would not work. The firmware was:
FW ver.2004.10.06.174
Vendor ID: PMC
Chip ID: PM39LV512
Checksum: 6D81
I updated to the lasted firmware version I found in Prolific’s web page and
now I can access data on the external HD thorugh ieee1394. Current firmware:
FW ver.2006.04.20.149
Vendor ID:PMC
Chip ID: PM39LV512
Chekcsum: 4D6F
3)Maximum writing speeds.
WindowsXP SP2 : ieee1394 - 18 MB/s
USB2.0 - 10 MB/
Suse9.3: ieee1394 - 7.2 MB/s (when writing to the FAT32 partition on the external HD)
2.5 MB/s (when writing to the xfs partition)
USB2.0 - half the speeds of ieee1394 under linux.
Reading is more reasonable. 24 MB/s with ieee1394 under linux.
I’ve tried switching the external HD jumper to master, slave and cable select, but no change. From those
numbers I guess it’s simply that the Prolific chipset is shit. But, is there a possibility to improve the
numbers for Linux? I don’t know right now what version of the Linux drivers I may have. Anyone tried to update this and found an improvement?
I bought the enclosure last november, but used mainly to read and only every now and then. Now realizing those very low speeds, I wonder if the fake is the enclosure or Prolific itself. Any of you found better specs ?
An update to post 86:
My device I have no idea what it is. It’s all plastic, has no screws for opening, only 4 snap-in hinges, and is metallic blue. On top it says “Mobile Disk”, with a square “o”. Underneath it says “Mobile HDD”. Go figure. After googling around I believe I found that it belongs to Sunny, but not 100% sure. I HATE these companies with no identification information on their products. Inside on the logic board I see “2PCB04V-013001E IDE—XXX3001TE”. Also the chips are: a PL-3507 04071C, a AT49BV512 and a Agere FW8020. It’s got 2 Firewire ports and 1 USB port, and a 12V power line.
Anyways, I’ve been as unsuccesful as all others with firmware 2003.10.31.012/vendor id 0X02/chip id 0X2D. So I picked up my soldering iron and tried to follow Luke’s suggestions, as best as I could. So I unsoldered some resistors and tried flashing with them off, and then restarting the device. I tried: R17 (closest 000ohm SMD), no go. Same with R49 (near IDE cable, I _tried_ to follow the pinouts and they led me here, 330ohm SMD), no go.
As I was looking at the schematics (http://www.prolific.com.tw/support/files/%5CIDE%20Storage%5CPL-3507%5CDoc%5CDatasheet%5Cds_pl3507_v15B.pdf)
I noticed pins 41, 43, 75 on the PL-3507. Would anyone in the know be able to spot by looking at the schematics above, which pin needs to be brought low or hi so as to allow writing to the flash device?
Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much!
Tony
[…] y sobre todo Prolific PL3507 Firewire Device […]
look i chant find any thing to help me with this creative zen i have been to so many web sites wutt the hell can some body help me here
Hi to everybody,
I am not very expert so I need precise and simple information.
I have an external hard disk that has these characteristics:
prolific pl3507 Combo Device (1394-ATAPI rev. 1.10)
IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device
date of “controlador” 1/7/2001, version 5.1.2535.0
I have windows xp pro
I have the usual problems of access to my external hard disk (it seems to work better with firewire in comparison to usb 2.0). There is also a folder on the hard disk (722922cb3ace3eca85dd49) that I think came out after some time I started to use the hard disk. Inside there is a folder “update” that cannot be opened. The folder is not deletable.
Sometimes my OS says that ther is an error of remote writing on my external hard disk.
I have tried to update the firmware looking on the Prolific website. However, I don’t know what version of the firmware I have (1.10 ?), and I don’t know how can I update it.
Here are my questions:
- What’s my firmware version? How can update the firmware?
- Do you think the folder “722922cb3ace3eca85dd49″ is a virus, is a problem in general, how can I remove it?
- In addition to update the firmware, is there a possibility to improve the functioning of the external hard disk?
Every helpful comment will be deeply appreciated,
ciao
Hi there,
I have also problems with the prolific pl3507 Combo Device.
I’d bought an Advance BX-362COM enclosure with USB 2.0 and Firewire:
Prolific PL3507 Combo Device (1394-ATAPI rev. 1.10)
IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device
date of “controlador” =Device driver 1/7/2001, version 5.1.2535.0
I have Windows XP SP2 latest updates;
I have this connected by Firewire. With delayed write errors. And data lost.
Inside a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 harddrive 300GB.
Seagate advices me to buy an external enclosure of their own
with an Seagate harddrive already inside. Seagate refers me also to Prolific.
Prolific doesn’t react up till now.
I have the same question as Marko posted Wednesday, 15 November 2006 at 7:30
I have tried to update the firmware looking on the Prolific website. However, I don’t know what version of the firmware I have (1.10 ?), and I don’t know how can I update it.
My question:
- What’s my firmware version? How can update the firmware?
Thank you for your suggestions.
Regards,
I get the yellow write failure notice when i write large ammounts of dtat to my drive.
SMARTDISK 120 GB model: FWFP120EU
connected via windoes service pack 2 default driver.
driver version: 5.1.2535.0
There is nothing wrong with the hard drive ..it its the window default firewire DRIVER.
does anyone know if and when it will be updated..is there a different driver made by any third parties available.
Why do I know its the driver.
1.Well I have more that one cable which works else where on macs and stuff.
2.I also own a plexor firewire / usb drive. it works fine on USB but on firewire when burninga dvd is disappears from My computer and fails.
3. Delayed Write Failures only occur when writing large amounts of data or doing both reading and writing from same disk.
4. It has never disappeared when only reading large ammounts, so I don’t think its a phyical problem with the firewire port on my DELL Latitude D800 computer itself, plus looking across the web lots of people seem to be having this trouble and I should note that it spans a variety of disk manufacturers. http://www.bustrace.com/delayedwrite/index.htm
Anyway to me it like the drive can cope with the speed of writing the data or something. I guess the driver needs to be updated so it’s able to manage tranfer of data better somehow.
if anyone has a solution please post here.
Can you tell me what specifically the Prolific PL3507 is? Is this the Firewire card itself or the hard drive enclosure that I have which can be used either as firewire or USB?
Thanks…
Ok well the PL3507 is the USB & firewire IDE bridge control chip in side these caddy’s. if you have one take it back if you can or bin it. I got one around 4 hours ago spent the whole time sins trying to get firewire to work.
I cant flash the ROM chip, I get Code 10, code 43 and “driver not installed” errors from device manager. It is not detected in OS X 10.4.8. I am taking it back tomorrow, it a pile of crap the only good thing in the one i have the the alu case in thats usless to me withought firewire.
Btw USB works fine its only firewire that doesnt but i wanted it for firewire mainly so anyway. Dont buy a drive with the PL3507 chip and if you have take it back or burn it nuf said :)
Trouble Solved!!!!!
I had many troubles (corrupted partitions, system locks moving large files,etc…)with HDD 120 GB in a prolific p3705 case using firewire (AKA IEEE 1394) on windows XP pro, until I realized that windows XP by default assign all network clients,protocols and services to IEEE 1394, considering it as a LAN port. From the moment I disabled all of them (windows network client, File and printer sharing, TCP/IP )for the firewire port, the unit has worked flawlessly for more than a year, watching Mpeg2, divx, AVI and listen music 0 faults, even across an ethernet LAN.
Obviously not a word about it in the “instructions” (half a paper sheet with something that wanted to be english).
http://www.byteccusa.com/download/PL-3507%20Firmware.zip
this is the latest which fixed my spindown issue on a mac. (PL3507-090605B.hex)
Andrews last post says PROLIFIC p3507 Problem Solved! by disabling net clients file & printer sharing,TCP/IP For the firewire port(please help HOW DO I DISABLE THESE in the firewire port)
You can easily disable Firewire port/LAN under My Network Places->Network Connections. Disable