🚀 go-pugleaf

I've encountered a puzzling error. When I launch my application under 
the Metrowerks debugger I get one of the following two messages:

    The version of the symbolics file is unsupported.

    Warning - this SYM file has some invalid or inconsistent data.

I'm using CW Pro 6 under MacOS 9.1. My project folder is installed on a 
Firewire drive from FirewireDirect.com. Disk First Aid reports no 
errors. I can reproduce the problem 100% of the time using the Code 
Warrior Stationery Mac C++ Toolbox project. The problem is the same for 
68K, PPC, and Carbon targets.

Applying the CW Pro 6.1 update made no difference. Using a different 
Mac made no difference.

I was able to work around the problem in three different ways:

1. Boot from a MacOS 9.0 system folder.

2. Move my project folder to an ATA hard drive.

3. Move my project folder to a Disk Copy disk image.

Here are some additional clues:

The problem does not occur when I use a Firewire Powerbook as a disk 
drive in target disk mode. If I boot from a desktop Mac and place the 
project on the Powerbook's drive then I can debug with no trouble. I 
tried this in an attempt to rule out Firewire itself as the problem - I 
have no other Firewire drive.

The problem must occur when reading the SYM file, not when writing to 
it. I say this because I can compile and link a project on my Firewire 
drive and then move it to an ATA drive and debugging will work. If I 
compile on an ATA drive and move the project folder to my Firewire 
drive then debugging will not work.

Under MacOS 9.1 I'm using Firewire Enabler and Firewire Support 
versions 2.7. On MacOS 9.0.4 I was using versions 2.5. I tried 
downgrading to 2.5 under MacOS 9.1 - the problem remained.

I'm using version 1.8FWD of the FirewireDirect FW Driver and version 
1.0 of the FirewireDirect OHCI Enabler. I believe the drivers were 
written by Prosoft Engineering.

The model of drive I have is a "Spark 32".

To summarize, the problem occurs with the following:

CW Pro 6 or 6.1
Apple Firewire extensions 2.5 or 2.7
MacOS 9.1
A FireWireDirect external hard drive

Any ideas what might be going on here? I reported the problem to 
Metrowerks and FirewireDirect a week ago - I haven't heard back from 
either.

-- 
Adam Wildavsky <adam@tameware.com>