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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

R2E Cable Problem?

D

Dustin Cross

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Is anyone else having problems with their R3E eSATA cables for Red drives? I got mine a couple weeks ago and it has never worked. I have tried it on several drives and with several different power supplies and a few different esata cards and machines.

I talked to the guys at Cool Camera Gear and they said Red has changed something on the drives to fix the SATA_TRANS_FAULT and that is causing problems for the cable. They are working on a fix, but don't have anything yet.

I have seen nothing here about people having problems with the cable, so I am asking, are people having problems with the R2E cable?


Thanks,
Dusty
 
I have tried it with my fixed 320GB drives, several 640GB drives, OSX 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, Rocketraid eSATA, onboard mac tower eSATA, Sonnet Expresscard eSATA, and Sonnet Expresscard eSATA Pro on two different 15" macbook pros.

No luck with anything.

That is why I am trying to find out if I should just get a new cable or get rid of the thing, because right now it just sits there useless.


Dusty
 
Try and get it exchanged to see if it's the cable. Have you tried it on someone else's gear, i.e. another Red Drive that's not yours, or another MB that's not yours, and that has not been upgraded yet...

If it's a Red firmware issue, what build is the footage on? That would mean some new firmware has fucked up the formatting and the cable can't read the drives.

That's scary, it means it might happen to me if I upgrade my camera firmware. I think the last shoot was on B20...
:confused5:
 
I have tried it on several peoples drives and three different computers all with different versions of OSX. I have only tried it with B20 and B21beta. I haven't tried it on any 320GB drives that didn't have the SATA_TRANS_ERROR fixed and all the 640GB drives were supposed to have that fixed also.

The guys at Cool Camera Gear made it sound like they new there was some sort of issue and they were working on a fix. They thought it had something to do with 320GB drives that had the SATA_TRANS_ERROR fixed and the new 640GB drives.


Dusty
 
I have two 320Gb, that never required that fix I guess since they both work fine. So this was not something that came from a build? It's a proper drive malfunction? That would reassure me.

Then yep, maybe it's a thing in that error fix. They fix something and something else goes wrong... What a drag! Keep me posted as I'm eager to find out what was the issue.

Good luck.
 
All 320GB drives I have seen required the SATA_TRANS_ERROR hardware fix. I have even see it on some early 640GB drives. And that error is a nightmare and when they took it out of B20 it became more of a problem, because cameras would just have random problems with no warning and playback is almost impossible. My two 320GB drives that have been fixed are the only drives I know I can trust on set. All other drives it is just a matter of time until they start having the problem and it is so random. I have used 10 drives (6x 320 and 4x 640) in the last six weeks on six different cameras (different versions of B20) and all the 320GB drives and two of the 640GB drives had the SATA_TRANS_ERROR. The other two 640GB drives refused to mount on my computer to download so I got rid of them before I really had a chance to get an error.

Since I sent my two 320GB drives to Red and had them fixed, they work 100% of the time with no errors. So I prefer to have drives I know will work 100% of the time than eSATA to my laptop for download.

Dusty
 
Dustin, have you been able to get over it?
We are experiencing the same problem here with our RED-RAM and Sonnet Pro Expresscard eSata installed over our macbook pro 17¨ leopard.
It has recently undergone a repair for Sata_Trans_Fault, irregular restarts and firewire 800 port recognition problems. Firewire port works fine now, but the R2E cable does not seem to work. We do not know if the R2E cable was working before the fix because we have not tried.
Just to mention, Sata_Trans_Fault error have disappeared after the fix but now it has introduced Rocketio_Error during playback.
 
Caglar,

Sorry, but I have not gotten my cable working and have heard nothing from the guys who make the cable.

The cable works on 320GB drives that have not had the SATA_TRANS_FAULT fixed, but I won't use those drives, because there are too many problems.

The cable does not work with fixed 320GB drives or any 640GB drive I have found.

Sorry to hear about the Rocketio_Error. I haven't seen that one yet. My 320GB drives that Red fixed are working great.

Dusty
 
As a Data Management Tech I recently finished a job using 6 Red Drives. Only 2 out of 6 worked with the R2E. Turns out it was the 2 that the Rental house had not sent back to fix the SATA_TRANS_FAULT. It seems to me the R2E will not work with any drive with that fix. On the other side of it, seems like the non fixed drives occasionally won't mount or will unmount after recording clips and will not remount. Drives have been sent in to Red, so we'll see for sure.

But definitely looking for a fix on this non-functioning R2E cable.
 
Sorry I haven't seen this thread earlier.

As Dustin said, RED has changed a spec with the new and repaired drives which has something to do with the amount of signal being sent from the drives to the camera. They have upped the power to increase the stability of the camera to drive connection. This works well when used within RED's system, because the camera can be told to accept a signal at the power that it comes, regardless of what eSATA spec is.

However, when you connect the drive to a computer's eSATA connection, which is looking for a signal only in a certain standardized range to protect the system, it does not recognize the now out of eSATA spec signal.

RED has confirmed that there is nothing wrong with the cable design and that before the spec at RED was changed, it was confirmed to work correctly. But we must work out a fix for the higher than eSATA spec signal to bring the signal down into a range that makes it acceptable to the computer.

We have been working on a fix, but it has taken time, and we must find a way to do so economically because the build of the cable makes it fairly expensive to produce as it is.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I will keep you guys updated when we have new information.

Tim
 
Tim Sutherland said:
...We have been working on a fix, but it has taken time, and we must find a way to do so economically because the build of the cable makes it fairly expensive to produce as it is.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I will keep you guys updated when we have new information.

Tim
Click to expand...

I wonder if there are any off the shelf esata extender cables or joiners which you could wire a resistive pad into? If so, you could even provide a DIY guide for the tech savvy owners out there.
 
If you use a Jmicron Chipset the 640GB Drives will work, I just finished a Feature with 3 of them, The one 320 GB Drive worked also. But You will only see this on Windows or PC's that run osx. Where the Jmicron 363 is on the motherboard.

Sil3132 chipsets will not work, and functioning e-sata cards for laptops either use Marvell, sil3132, or JM362. I have not gotten a 640 GB drive around my jMicron Card yet to test. But NO 640GB drives or Red RAM will work with a Marvell or Sil3132 sata controller, I still have been using most 320 GB Drives just fine though.
 
My cable is collecting dust. I have my original 320GB drives that never needed to be sent in for a fix, and I use a Sonnet Express 34 eSata Pro card in my MBP. The cable used to work fine, but then suddenly stopped working. I have yet to figure out why. It's a bit frustrating as the cable is not cheap, and I'd rather be using it, so any information we can get from CCG would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Purpose built solution please

Purpose built solution please

As another data point: I have the R2E cable and it has worked perfectly with my early vintage 320GB RedDrives, both to my GlobalStor PC workstation and my 2008 MacPro tower. Drives have never been fixed.

Now, how about RED's download station? Anyone at RED care to pass along an update on how that's coming along? It sure would smooth over relationships with producers/PMs if the download times were faster. Just sayin'

Cheers - #19
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
As another data point: I have the R2E cable and it has worked perfectly with my early vintage 320GB RedDrives.
Click to expand...
As another:
My cable still works but only for the time being. I have early vintage 320GB drives that haven't been tweaked, using CalDigit FASTA-1ex, and I'm still on Build 21.3.2.

I'm sure if I install a newer Firmware build the cable will no longer work...
 
What will fix the issue?
A Company like Silicon Image that make a chipset that will take the out of spec e-sata. Has anyone tried their cables with chipsets other than Marvell or Sil3132 other than me?

We have to pay attention, I think a higher spec Sil4725 or 3735 might take the out of spec range. We all need to be actively looking at Jmicron cards because they still work with this cable. And when one comes out thats hotswap, UPnP works with port mulitpliers and has multiple ports.

I can get any of these drives working when booting up to osx with a jmicron 363 chipset. But no other way./
 
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