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Firewire dead?
Can’t get firewire to work. Won’t see external drives, AJA or HDV decks through firewire… ran hardware test shows that no firewire present… Did the PRAM thing… I am assuming that means the card is dead? Will an OS reinstall help or should I stop wasting my time and get it into the shop. Nno extra PCI slots to drop a firewire card in… those are occupied by the video card, raid controller and capture card… Brilliant design on Apple’s part (NOT!) considering how limiting this is to video folks … okay, I’m off my soap box… thanks in advance for any suggestions in advance…
Matt Sowder
Fiddler’s Ridge Productions -
5 Replies
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Try resetting the PMU switch on your Mac’s motherboard. Disconnect the power cable then open it up and push the button. There are articles about where this button is on apple’s support site. What it does is reset all power management on all busses…. and zaps the pram etc… all in one quick move. If this fails, your card is probably fried.
Jerry
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What happens in your use the internal FW bus? If it’s gone, too, you must replace the PC card to get back to work. After your project is done, you will send the MAcintosh in for serious work, could take two weeks to replace the FW system.
This is always a user-caused problem. Someone in your shop plugged in a FW connector upside down. You may also have destroyed the FW chip on the camera, deck, or drive that was being attached. The FW plugs are easily inserted incorrectly. It’s a lousy hardware design.
Blame Apple if it will make you feel better but I’d start gently reminding your staff that FW carries current.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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[Matt Sowder] “Can’t get firewire to work. Won’t see external drives, AJA or HDV decks through firewire… ran hardware test shows that no firewire present…”
If Jerry’s suggestion doesn’t work, somebody probably connected a powered device to the FW connection while it was turned on. That can fry a Firewire port instantly, especially if it was something like the Panasonic 1200A player / recorder which is notrious for this very issue.
Always connect / disconnect powered FW devices when they are turned off.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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I’d guess that folks who previously worked with SCSI have fewer firewire burn outs. With SCSI you need to make sure the device ID was set to a unique ID and not to a reserved ID, you had the right cable type and the chain terminated correctly, and there was no such thing as hot swapping. You had to shut down the whole system to switch drives.
Keeping such superstitions when using firewire never hurts (although powering down the device being connected will do the trick. I think it’s safe to leave the system running.)
Paranoia is sometimes a good thing, especially when connecting firewire devices.
But just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out there watching me….
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Sony specifies that, for a DSR-1500 DV deck, both the computer system *and* the deck must be shut down. We’ve already had to have our deck serviced once because we assumed we could hot-swap.
pxlmvr
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