I picked up a QPS Que!Fire Drive at a thrift store for just a few dollars, but it didn’t come with a power supply. Once I got power to it, the brick and cord heated up when the drive was connected, and the unit didn’t do anything. This was the translucent FireWire CD-RW model aimed at the iMac crowd around 2000, with a Plextor 10/12/32A drive inside.
The enclosure came apart pretty easily since it was mostly held together with plastic clips. Inside, the optical drive turned out to be a standard IDE unit, with a separate QPS board on the back handling the IDE-to-FireWire conversion. I disconnected the small power lead feeding that board and unplugged the data connection so I could isolate the drive from the interface board and see whether the short was in the bridge hardware or somewhere else.
When I checked voltages, I got some confusing readings at first, including negative readings on the 5V rail and missing 12V. I switched over to a benchtop supply and eventually found that the issue was my test setup, not the drive’s wiring. The power connector used separate ground returns, and once both grounds were connected properly, I had the expected 5V and 12V rails.
With the voltages sorted out, I tried powering the original Plextor drive directly. As soon as I connected it, the bench supply shut down. I swapped in another optical drive just as a test, and that one powered up normally, which narrowed the problem down to the original drive itself rather than the enclosure electronics or the power source. A close look at the original drive board didn’t show any obvious failed parts, and I left that there rather than chasing surface-mount faults on the board.
I went thrift store hunting for a replacement and found another external optical drive in a partially disassembled case. This one had FireWire and USB on the back, came with a matching power adapter, and used the same 5V and 12V supply ratings. I tested its power brick and saw the same odd readings when probing the plug directly, but once it was connected through the backplane, the voltages checked out correctly.
That replacement drive didn’t work at first either, but the problem there was simple: the IDE ribbon had been installed backwards by whoever had been inside it before. Once I corrected that, the drive powered up and worked over USB on a Windows 10 machine. The system detected it, VLC launched, and it read a disc, so I had a working donor assembly.
The donor back panel didn’t match the original QPS opening, so I marked the Que!Fire case and cut it to fit the newer interface section. I used a bandsaw at the makerspace to make the long cut, then trimmed the top so the replacement back panel would slide into place. The fit was close because the case curved at the back, but it went together with only a small gap, and I reused the original shell so it still looked like the Que!Fire from the front.
The finished unit went back together and worked with the replacement drive and interface installed in the original case. The original bezel and buttons didn’t line up with the donor drive, but the enclosure was usable again.
— Aaron
Links
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:44 – The Problem
02:30 – Disassembly
05:20 – Testing Voltage
08:26 – Testing The Drive
11:48 – A New Drive
15:38 – Testing The New Drive
16:09 – Cutting The Case
18:42 – All Done