njr 3.0

Does anyone have experience installing ATAPI drives in 3.5" half-height FireWire enclosures? A generous acquaintance donated (er, "long-term loan"ed) me a 4 GB Travan ATAPI tape drive to replace my dead Sony SDT-5200 pseudo-DDS-2 drive. But it doesn't fit very well in my G4: I had to install it upside down and its use precludes my simultaneously connecting an IDE cable to the factory installed CD-RW drive. I have a choice of:

• hacking up the inside of the case so the drive will fit right-side up (the bay is designed to accommodate a Zip drive, which has its IDE and power connectors on the opposide side)
• trying to somehow fit a FireWire/ATAPI bridge board into one of the external SCSI enclosures I have (the space above the tape drive you see in the picture at right is empty)
• installing the tape drive in an external FireWire case, which is still a lot cheaper than buying a new internal tape drive.

This enclosure looks like the faceplate comes off, which might make it work, but the Web page doesn't mention any compatibility with non-hard drives.

Suggestions appreciated on how to achieve this goal; I just had a hard drive failure and the thought of not being backed up scares me. I wish I could afford a real tape drive right now.

11:15 PM | Radio