New bootable drives for pre-2009 Mini's ???

I'm trying to keep an old G4 mini running with 10.4.11 such as to maintain access to Classic mode (old files and apps).
I've been booting this (and other 'classic' Mini's) from external Firewire 400 mirrored RAID sets 'since forever' with NO issues at all (great speeds vs 2.5" internal HD)
Recently I had one slice (drive) of this RAID set go bad. Figuring that the other one wouldn't be far behind, I order 2 new external FW800 drives ("Ministack Classic"). (after having questioned the compatibility of FW 400 with 800 and specifying to the vendor that these were intended as boot drives for a G4 Mini and then being convinced there would be no problem).
Only to discover (through a LONG confounding process with vendor's tech support) that the chip sets used in todays external drives will NOT boot a pre-2009 Mac Mini (neither a PPC or Intel)
These drives DO mount, RAID is online, reads and writes, CCC indicates its bootable, and the System recognizes it as a bootable device BUT It will not /can not boot.
Other (older) FW400 RAID sets do boot the machine flawlessly but not any available replacement drives I can locate.
Neither OWC, CDW or MacMall (et al) have any drives with boot chips sets compatible with older (pre-2009) Mini's - ***?
NOW WHAT ???

1) over the years I've asked dozens of questions on this forum. I've NEVER gotten a straight answer to any inquiry. Just obfuscation - mostly well-intentioned, some creative - yet irrelevant.
2) to the current issue. Turns out that external firewire drives with either Oxford 934 or 936 chip sets WILL still boot pre-2009 Macs, including G4's (i.e, MacMini 10,1) running 10.3 or above
3) Some Oxford 940-series chip sets may also still be bootable on pre-2009 Macs (only) IF the enclosure has a switch inside that turns of support for drives in excess of 2.2 TB (and the drive itself is less than 2.2 TB)
4) These drives ARE still available - at least from OWC (More than one of their techs was misinformed and I'm now assured by a senior tech that the above information is correct. If this is not correct, blame them. I'm just repeating what I was just told and only trying to help clarify what the situation is currently.

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There should be a compatible replacement superdrive-like optical drive
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They also appear to have several other upgrade & replacement parts...
An instruction video (free) can be seen on the bottom of their pages
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jessicar
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<Title Edited by Host>

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Boilerplate text:
Reset Preferences
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/375776
1) Close the program and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (not reversible)
or
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http://www.bugge.com/Family-and-friends/Illy/illy.html
--OB

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New bootable drives for pre-2009 Mini's ???

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