[Eriamjh]

I am planning on upgrading the HD in my 7300 and I found the cheapest way is to put a FW card in it (already own one), put an IDE HD in my pyro FW case, and I am up and running to play MP3s.

The problem is I don't know if this will work. Will the 7300 boot to an external FW hard disk (it doesn't need to, I can conitnue to boot on the internal HD, just asking). Can it access a FW HD?

I can run up to OS8.6. The 7300 can run up to OS9.0.0.0.0 and not a smidge higher.

Does 8.6 have FW drivers or do I need 9.0? Has anyone tried this? Can the FW deliver MP3 data fast enough to play them without skipping? Is the 200MHz 604e fast enough to run iTunes 1.1 and pull the data off FW?

This is my most inexpensive solution to adding HD space to my 7300 because I already own the FW card and the FW chassis. I can even use any HD I have lying aound or buy a new one. However, if I have to buy OS 9.0 (not 9.0.4 or 9.1) then I will have extra cost.

Help?

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

I'm fairly certain the Firewire will work fine in OS 8.5.1 and higher. You will probably have to download Firewire support (version 2.4 I believe).

I don't think you can boot from a Firewire drive with an added PCI FW card.

The system should be able to access the drive fine. MP3s don't require very fast disk access to play. Any CD you play them from is much slower than a HD of virtually any type (other than USB possibly). You shouldn't have any problems there.

My wife used to run iTunes off her old 200Mhz Motorolla Starmax clone and it worked just fine. Again, FW being the source drive shouldn't matter at all.