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Rating: 
Summary: Watch out!!!
Review: Be advised that not all scsi products work with this adapter, I have a Minolta Slide Scanner, and although the product recognizes the scanner there is no way I can complete a scan. Check their compatibility list before you buy. Also the technical support is awful and useless.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for basic SCSI, especially on new Firewire Macs
Review: I bought a LaCie 12X SCSI CD-R this summer, intending to use it with my Apple PowerBook 3400c. When the 3400c unexpectedly gave up the ghost in October, I decided against trying to repair it, and bought a new Indigo iBook. The iBook is a great computer, but it doesn't have SCSI, and there's no PC Card slot, so one can't add a general-purpose SCSI card. Of course, I didn't want to get rid of my new CD-R, so I started looking for ways to connect it to the iBook's Firewire port. I soon came across the Orange Converter. After reading positive reviews, I decided to try it, and ordered one. When it arrived, I unboxed it, skimmed the "install" section of the manual (which is included only on CD-ROM in Acrobat format), and had my CD-R burning at 12X speed inside of five minutes. Since then, I have used the Converter extensively both for burning and reading data. I have no complaints at all. The only shortcoming of the Orange Converter is its limitation of a single SCSI device, but, as the product literature mentions, devices can generally be hot-swapped, so this isn't a huge problem. For most users with basic SCSI needs, the Converter is sufficient, and much cheaper than, say, a new Orange Grappler SCSI card for your G3 or G4 desktop. In all, a good buy and an excellent, user-friendly piece of hardware.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for basic SCSI, especially on new Firewire Macs
Review: I bought a LaCie 12X SCSI CD-R this summer, intending to use it with my Apple PowerBook 3400c. When the 3400c unexpectedly gave up the ghost in October, I decided against trying to repair it, and bought a new Indigo iBook. The iBook is a great computer, but it doesn't have SCSI, and there's no PC Card slot, so one can't add a general-purpose SCSI card. Of course, I didn't want to get rid of my new CD-R, so I started looking for ways to connect it to the iBook's Firewire port. I soon came across the Orange Converter. After reading positive reviews, I decided to try it, and ordered one. When it arrived, I unboxed it, skimmed the "install" section of the manual (which is included only on CD-ROM in Acrobat format), and had my CD-R burning at 12X speed inside of five minutes. Since then, I have used the Converter extensively both for burning and reading data. I have no complaints at all. The only shortcoming of the Orange Converter is its limitation of a single SCSI device, but, as the product literature mentions, devices can generally be hot-swapped, so this isn't a huge problem. For most users with basic SCSI needs, the Converter is sufficient, and much cheaper than, say, a new Orange Grappler SCSI card for your G3 or G4 desktop. In all, a good buy and an excellent, user-friendly piece of hardware.
Rating: 
Summary: Works well sometimes
Review: I bought one of these about a year ago because my Apple PowerBook didn't have SCSI ports but I still wanted to use my existing hard drives, CD-RW, and tape backup drive. All three devices connected okay and I'm now using Mac OS X 10.1.5 (it has always worked with OS X without any additional drivers.) In general, the adapter works fine and allowed me to use the old equipment without a hitch. However, I have always had intermittent failures which would cause the drivers to hang (apparently) and about half the time I'd need to re-boot to clear the problem. These problems would surface when doing large I/O transfers--either with a hard disk or with the nightly backups (the ~20MB incremental backups worked fine but the ~3GB full backups would finish successfully only about 1 time in 3.) Anyway, I noticed the deck-of-cards-sized unit would get quite warm to the touch (I'd guess around 100 degrees Fahrenheit / 40 Celsius.) My theory about why it failed is that (1) the unit would heat up when it was used--it stayed cool while idle, (2) it would eventually overheat and hang if used continuously, (3) the external AC adapter is necessary to provide consistent power since the SCSI termination power from the tape drive wasn't too reliable, (4) in rare cases, long or low-quality FireWire cables would cause the driver and/or unit to hang, and (5) the SCSI chain must be kept simple or the driver and/or unit will eventually hang. I recently bought a project box from and a small fan. I popped open the converter and put the circuit board inside the box with the fan. I simplified the SCSI chain to just a high-quality adapter and a passive terminator, used the better and shorter of my two FireWire cables, and used the power adapter. So far I've been able to complete three full backups in a row (it's media recycle time!) for a total of about 10GB transferred over about 10 hours of heavy use and 4 days powered-up continuously (the tape drive is the bottleneck--disk transfers are much faster.)
Rating:
Summary: Works well sometimes
Review: I bought one of these about a year ago because my Apple PowerBook didn't have SCSI ports but I still wanted to use my existing hard drives, CD-RW, and tape backup drive. All three devices connected okay and I'm now using Mac OS X 10.1.5 (it has always worked with OS X without any additional drivers.) In general, the adapter works fine and allowed me to use the old equipment without a hitch. However, I have always had intermittent failures which would cause the drivers to hang (apparently) and about half the time I'd need to re-boot to clear the problem. These problems would surface when doing large I/O transfers--either with a hard disk or with the nightly backups (the ~20MB incremental backups worked fine but the ~3GB full backups would finish successfully only about 1 time in 3.) Anyway, I noticed the deck-of-cards-sized unit would get quite warm to the touch (I'd guess around 100 degrees Fahrenheit / 40 Celsius.) My theory about why it failed is that (1) the unit would heat up when it was used--it stayed cool while idle, (2) it would eventually overheat and hang if used continuously, (3) the external AC adapter is necessary to provide consistent power since the SCSI termination power from the tape drive wasn't too reliable, (4) in rare cases, long or low-quality FireWire cables would cause the driver and/or unit to hang, and (5) the SCSI chain must be kept simple or the driver and/or unit will eventually hang. I recently bought a project box from and a small fan. I popped open the converter and put the circuit board inside the box with the fan. I simplified the SCSI chain to just a high-quality adapter and a passive terminator, used the better and shorter of my two FireWire cables, and used the power adapter. So far I've been able to complete three full backups in a row (it's media recycle time!) for a total of about 10GB transferred over about 10 hours of heavy use and 4 days powered-up continuously (the tape drive is the bottleneck--disk transfers are much faster.)
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