[rescue] External FireWire case

[William Enestvedt]

So I sort of dumpster-dived an external FireWire case -- actually, it was
handed to me as junk -- and cracked the cover. The drive seems to spin up
happily, and when I swapped in an optical drive, it, too, opened its tray to
be fed a CD-ROM and spun that up to speed -- but nothing ever shows on the Mac
to which it's connected.
   Does this sound like it's the FireWire bridge card that croaked? If so, are
these swappable? (The unit as a whole is out of warranty after what we did to
the case, though I plan to RMA the internal drive.)
   The case was a Western Digital 80GB (Model number WD800B002-RNx, I
believe), described on the WD web site at :
        http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=18
   Last night I found a web site (URL now lost) that shows someone modding old
external SCSI cases to act as FireWire enclosures, and I'm intrigued: I could
either just replace the FireWire board in this case I have, or refit a nice
external (50-pin SCSI) case I have now...or both!
   Does anyone have experience with this kind of project?

- Will Enestvedt