Tech Goes Boom

Genesys based IDE to USB 2 Cable

Yesterday while at Fry's Electronics, I picked up what looked like a very useful little gadget, an IDE to USB 2 cable. The packaging is really generic but looks pretty much like this one. While it didn't have any stated Mac support, I figured it must just be using USB mass storage, and the OS would support it. For $21 it was worth experimenting with given that it would be a great alternative to an external case.

Turns out it needs a driver on Macs, and unfortunately the driver on the Disc doesn't work in 10.3 or 10.4. I searched around for updated drivers, but couldn't find anything. I almost went for the return, but decided to look into it more closely.

Turns out there's a little Genesys bridge in the cable, but they don't supply drivers that I could find on their website. After digging around online for a while looking for anything related to Genesys and Mac OS X, I found the updated 2.3 version of the driver that works with 10.4. Here's a copy in case any googlers are looking for it. GeneIOUSBIDE 2.3

This allows the cable to function as you would expect. Jumper the drive as a master, plug it into power and into your USB port an it mounts as one would expect. Benchmarking the drive turning in a pretty anemic 7MB/Sec, vs my older USB drive case that turns in 10MB/sec. That same case also has firewire, and clocks in 30MB/sec over that interface.

So the cost of convenience in this case is a pretty hefty loss in speed. Worth it in many cases depending on how much information you have to transfer.

Some people report speeds in the 20MB/sec range on cables of this sort, but this one is obviously not capable of that. But I still consider it a good buy for $21.

Update: Found it! Here's the real linkage.