Will MorphOS work with FireWire drives?

Will it boot from one also?

Tj

There is a third party software called Helios (IIRC) that is a FireWire stack for MorphOS. I have not tried to use it, so I can't tell you how well it works. I doubt that it allows you to boot from a FireWire drive though, as it would need to be part of the OS to provide that kind of functionality.

As it was told at the "Alchimie" last month, MorphOS 3.x seems to have Helios integrated into the system. But I've got no idea if it will be possible to boot from Firewire devices.

A Powermac G4 QS and a Mac mini in Target-Disk Mode are working perfectly with the current version of Helios. I tried a recent external 3,5" HD case (with a SATA port) which doesn't work, according to Yomgui it's using a different chipset which isn't currently supported. But there are some older HD cases (with PATA ports), which are working good.

WEll I know Yomgui had personally had it working with data drives and with his Digital Camera. He was even trying to get the editing features of Blender usable with FW stack to read the cam. I forgot where he ended up with that project.

However, from recent news it seems integration of Helios into "Morphos3" will take a while? So probably not for the next release..

> Will MorphOS work with FireWire drives?

You might want to read that thread:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=9&topic_id=6126&start=31

...as Korni hinted you at a while ago.

have you ever had an original post without quoting some other thread?

> have you ever had an original post without quoting some other thread?

Yes, plenty, even some of them were replies to you. Any more questions preying on your mind?

The boot process of any machines is handled by its firmware, not by any OS.
So, this last should handle itself peripherals to be able to read/write any data from them.

For example, the mac mini has this kind of Firewire/SBP2 driver inside the OF, but Pegasos hasn't.
More over (but it's not the same thing), the mac mini OF can also make its internal harddrive visible
through the firewire port to any others connected machine by using the "Target Mode".
This special state of the OF transform your mac mini as an external Firewire harddrive case.

So don't expect that MorphOS and less Helios, to let you boot a Pegasos on an external firewire harddrive.

But the issue is not ends: the OS booting is in 2 steps, the first one is the loading and execution of the OS core bootloader, then the rest of OS itself through the famous startup-sequence.
The OS core can install Helios internaly and let you choose by an OF command option which harddrive contains OS data (MOSSYS: and SYS:).

In any cases, the OS core bootloader (the famous boot.img file) should reside on the internal harddrive (or maybe a usb hd/key?)

Note: Helios archive contains a device (sbp2.device) to mount sbp2 devices connected on the firewire bus and makes them visible on your Ambient screen. But there are nothing yet to expose your partitions on the bus (a sort of target mode, but with an usable OS in same time).

Yomgui

Thanks for the clarification..

@Yomgui,

What are the chances of someone (or yourself) writing a Helios Firewire webcam driver? What part(s) of Helios that are not completed now would be needed for an iSight webcam driver to be written?

Just wishful thinking, as I just purchased a NOS Apple iSight webcam.

@amigadave:

It could be possible, Apple cam use IIDC protocol, and if they are not big surprises, I can manage to write something.
But don't expect it now even in three months!

I need to finish few things before...

Great news, even if it is just a "Maybe" it can get written in the future. That is better than an answer of "No" it will never work.

Wish I was smart enough to work on stuff like that, but from what I have read over the last couple of years, hardware drivers are very difficult to write, and take a lot of time and effort.

I am sure that they require more smarts (or at least technical knowledge) than I currently possess. Too bad there isn't some "Dummie" work that someone like me, or other MorphOS users, could do, while you are working on your other projects, so there would be less work for you to do when you finally have the free time to work on MorphOS FireWire software.

I'm not that interested in the webcam driver, but getting it stable with an external SATA drive would be cool.
Now that I've got an FW800 Powermac, I wouldn't mind using the Firewire ports for extra storage drives.

BTW - How much success has there been with PATA drives?

> getting it stable with an external SATA drive would be cool.
> [...] How much success has there been with PATA drives?

SATA or PATA shouldn't make any difference as from the Mac's point of view it's just FireWire anyway. It's the FireWire bridge chip in the HDD enclosure that transparently connects to the SATA or PATA device. That is no different from USB where it also doesn't matter if it's a SATA or PATA HDD enclosure you connect to it.

Now that you are switching to a MDD FW800 PowerMac, you have the space to install up to four 3.5" internal hard drives. If your FW800 PowerMac is like my MDD when I got it, you might need to find the drive cage that fits under the optical drive bays, to hold two more hard drives. It is the same cage as the one that holds the hard drives vertically behind the optical drive bays, but it fits under the drive bays and holds the hard drives horizontally, not vertically.

My MDD had the IDE cables and power cables required for the two additional hard drives, but not the cage, so I don't know if the cage was removed by the previous owner, or if it is an optional part that you have to specify when you order your MDD, or FW800 PowerMac. I found and bought my drive cage from someone on eBay for $10 to $15, IIRC, which is probably a high price for that part, but if you can't find it anywhere else, what is a guy supposed to do. Since it is exactly the same as the other cage, and is removable from the rest of the computer, if you find an MDD that has been junked and is being parted out at some computer recycle shop, you can just grab the hard drive cage that holds the drive vertical behind the optical drive bays, and use it in your MDD for the drives you want to install horizontally under the optical drive bays.

My point in this whole reply, is that you should not need any external storage through FireWire to E-SATA connection, except for making backups that you can put away in a separate location from your computer, in case of fire, or some other catastrophe that destroys your computer and ruins all of the drives inside of it.

As far as external storage for backup purposes, I just bought a USB3 1.5TB external drive to use exclusively for backup purposes for 3 of my Mac computers, my G5 PowerMac & two G4 PowerBook's. It is backward compatible with USB2.0, so it works with all of my computers. The only drawback to it is that it draws its power through the USB cable so it will not work from a G4 PowerBook USB2.0 port, because the G4 PowerBook USB2.0 ports do not provide enough power to run external USB hard drives. So, I have to use a powered USB hub and I could only find one of my two powered USB hubs which I think might be only USB1.1, not USB2.0, because it took several hours to backup about 120gb of data.

I am using Time Machine to backup those 3 MacOSX10.5.8 computers. I need to check to see it Time Machine backs up other partitions, and/or additional hard drives that are not formatted as Mac hfs+? I doubt that Time Machine will backup the other partitions, or drives that have different OSes on them, in a dual or triple boot setup.

The only reason I was thinking of using an external drive was to format it as a FAT32 volume and use it on my PC and my Power mac.

Now that I think about it, I can probably do this via an eSATA connection.

[ Edited by Jim 24.04.2012 - 15:01 ]

Jim,
Quote:

You mean for transfering files between your PC and your PowerMac?

Or are you going to use this FAT32 formatted external hard drive to backup both your MorphOS2.7 hard drive in the PowerMac, and also backup a hard drive in your PC?

If it is just for file transfers, I would use a USB memory stick instead. I have an 8gb USB memory stick for this purpose.

Not quite sure what you want to use this external hard drive connected to the FireWire port of your FW800 PowerMac for. Not many Wintel PC's have FireWire ports and not many G4 PowerMac's have an eSATA PCI card.

Edit: Just to satisfy my curiosity, do you (or any other MDD & FW800 PowerMac owners) have the second hard drive cage under your optical drive bay? Just wondering if my dual 1.25GHz G4 MDD PowerMac had it's cage removed by the previous owner, or if it is an optional item and none of the rest of you have it either.


[ Edited by amigadave 24.04.2012 - 07:30 ]

Yep, my FW800 has a hard drive cage under the optical drive, but when I got it the cage that normally sits vertically was missing.

Oh, and one external housing I was looking at had both firewire and eSATA connections. The first would have worked with my mac and the second with my PC.

Any way, I decided to order an eSATA bracket and connect one of the connections on my Sil3512 card to it so that I can use the same interface on both computers.


[ Edited by Jim 24.04.2012 - 17:58 ]

@Jim,

Interesting! It appears that the previous owner had taken the hard drive cage that was vertical in the back of the case behind the optical drive bays, and placed it under the optical drive bays. It is the exact same cage that works in both locations, so if you like it vertical, behind the optical drive bays, you can easily unhook it from where it currently is sitting, and move it to the other hard drive cage location. IIRC, the faster IDE100 controller is the one that feeds the IDE cable that goes to the hard drive cage behind the optical drive bays, not to the one under the optical drive bays. You might want to check to make sure which one goes where, as I am sure you would rather use the IDE100MHz controller, instead of the IDE66MHz controller for your boot drive(s) and only use the IDE66MHz controller if you are going to use more than two hard drives in your FW800 PowerMac. I need to confirm which controller is the faster one in my MDD PowerMac, so I will have my MacOSX & MorphOS hard drives on this faster IDE controller too.

I have the boot drive connected to the ATA100 controller, but when 3.0 is released I hope to switch to an SATA interface.
I may still use the ATA100 controller for storage drives.

Edit - Don't answer the question below (its silly). Ebay...
Where do we get additional drive cages so that we can have one in each location?

[ Edited by Jim 24.04.2012 - 21:43 ]

I already answered the silly question in a previous (long winded) message of mine. You can get one on eBay sometimes, or if you can find any MDD PowerMac's that are broken and being thrown out to the trash, or taken to the computer recycle store/center, there is sure to be at least one hard drive cage inside the broken computer.