[CarpetFluff]

Hi folks,

I'm curious, I saw this little hoofer doofer a couple of weeks ago that was the equivalent of an external firewire enclosure (for fitting any internal drive) but it was caseless and just left the internal drive exposed, kinda ugly but it was pretty cheap.

Does anyone know what i'm talking about? (it would be a first if anyone did actually!)

thnaks in advance

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally posted by CarpetFluff:
<STRONG>Hi folks,

I'm curious, I saw this little hoofer doofer a couple of weeks ago that was the equivalent of an external firewire enclosure (for fitting any internal drive) but it was caseless and just left the internal drive exposed, kinda ugly but it was pretty cheap.

Does anyone know what i'm talking about? (it would be a first if anyone did actually!)

thnaks in advance </STRONG>

Yeah those are Firewire bridge boards

Inside every Firewire external enclosure is one of these, just that you can buy them by themselves.

By the way, it's not really a good idea to run them bare like this... once a powersupply is attached and any of the pins are accidenly crossed, the board will go *poof* - you'll get that pleasant odor of burning cuircuts and you'll have a pile of useless slag.

The model in the link takes a standard drive connector for hooking up devices inside a computer case, but other models take various other power supplies for stand alone devices. But again - I stress- operate the board bare outside of a case, with power hooked up at your own peril!

$99US is way steep for a bridge board as well... you should be able to buy a decent enclosure (which of course has the board in it) for that. They actually run around $30US these days. I've found making my own Firewire enclosures to be pretty cost effective... get a $30 bridge, and mount it inside various cases such as old SCSI external bays, removeable rack units, custom case mounts, etc.

There are also boards that run multiple IDE devices from one unit- quite handy for building custom Firewire drive combo devices.

[CarpetFluff]

thanks for that, although it's not exactly what i'm taking about, it's close. I've seen the equivalent of that bridgeboard but it's not exposed like that, the actual bridgeboard is enclosed in a small unit which fits at the back of the drive. Nothing is exposed at all, it just looks uglier than having the hard drive in a case.

And you're right, that's really expensive, this thing was like $50

fanx

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Ahh okay! Sorry, never heard of that particular doohickey... but sounds interesting. Still the drive is unenclosed eh? If so that still seems a bit risky having the hard drive's own electronics explosed while in active use, or around any potential sources of static electricity. So you've seen this device in use and it's meant to be used externally?

Please, when you find out what it is, let us know!

[Paco500]

I think what you are looking for is the <A HREF="http://www.wiebetech.com/" TARGET=_blank>FireWire Drive Dock
</A>.

It looks cool- but it ain't $50. Way too expensive. I've never seen anything else like this, so I'm pretty sure this is it.

Originally posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE:
<STRONG>
$99US is way steep for a bridge board as well... you should be able to buy a decent enclosure (which of course has the board in it) for that. They actually run around $30US these days. I've found making my own Firewire enclosures to be pretty cost effective... get a $30 bridge, and mount it inside various cases such as old SCSI external bays, removeable rack units, custom case mounts, etc.
</STRONG>

where did you see them for $30? I can't find them any cheaper than 60.

I got a combo Firewire/USB 1.1 case for $69. I got a Firewire-only case for $67. Both include the bridgeboard and power supply of course, and both work fine with both Windows XP and Mac OS X.

$50 for a doohickey like that is simply too expensive (esp if you need to buy a separate power supply) unless you want it for an internal drive.