Firewire Bus Power - Not Needed

I've been using an Echo AudioFire 12 firewire interface for years with my Mac Pro, but now I'm using it in the field with my MacBook.
The AF 12 is (AC) self powered yet the MacBook automatically sends it bus power, thusly running hotter and the fan never stops.
If I plug in a 6 pin FW cable to the MacBook and leave the other end un-attached the fan never turns on. When I plug in the AF 12, the fan starts up (within a few minutes).
Or is there a way to disable Firewire bus power on the Mac (10.6.5). Or can this be achieved using a cable that doesn't send power.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

I had the same idea as you.
I didn't think of looking for a method of turning off the Mac's firewire power - this would be excellent.
The method I used was:
A firewire 6pin to 4pin cable like this (not this actual ebay item).
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2M-Firewire-IEEE1394-Cable-4-6-Pin-DV-out-PC-Lead-/2605482 48174?pt=UKComputing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item3ca9e2c26e#ht_2727wt1141
A firewire Adapter 6 Pin Male to *4 Pin Female* (not this actual ebay item).
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1394-Firewire-Adapter-6-Pin-Male-4-Pin-Female-/35040349329 7?pt=UKComputing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item5195acfdb1#ht_3761wt1141
My idea was that a firewire 4pin connection does not carry power, so the firewire signal would get through, but the power from the computer wouldn't.
The combined 6pin plug and adapter were heavy. They needed to be supported to keep them level when plugged in, if the socket was horizontally aligned, like on the MacBook Pro.
If you try this - be careful when ordering the adapter - some adapters are male to male - you need 6 Pin Male to *4 Pin Female*.
I also wrapped a piece of tape around the combined plug and adapter.
Hope this helps.
Richard

Similar Messages

Firewire Bus Power - Un-needed

I've been using an Echo AudioFire 12 firewire interface for years with my Mac Pro, but now I'm using it in the field with my MacBook.
The AF 12 is (AC) self powered yet the MacBook automatically sends it bus power, thusly running hotter and the fan never stops.
If I plug in a 6 pin FW cable to the MacBook and leave the other end un-attached the fan never turns on. When I plug in the AF 12, the fan starts up (within a few minutes).
Or is there a way to disable Firewire bus power on the Mac (10.6.5). Or can this be achieved using a cable that doesn't send power.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Someone may know of a way to disable power on the macbook side of things, but I don't know how. I do know that if you use a 4-wire FireWire 400 cable it will not send power, and that they do make 6-pin cables that don't have power pins connected. It looks like the AudioFire 12 does not have a 4-pin FireWire port, but you may have some luck with a 6-pin cable that doesn't have power pins. This may not fix the issue, however, as depending on how many system resources are consumed by the AF 12, it may just be using enough CPU cycles or taxing the FireWire interface enough to kick the fan into high gear.

FireWire Bus Power - How Much Power?

Is there any way to find out how many watts the FireWire bus power is on a Mac?
I have one of these:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ultragbplus.php
It's an external bus powered FireWire 800 drive. I have the 500GB version. It runs flawlessly on bus power on my PowerBook G4 17" using the FW 800 cable, and even runs fine on bus power when I try the FW400-to-FW800 cable.
On my Intel iMac Core Duo 20" though, it wil not run on bus power using the very same 400-to-800 cable so I guess the bus power on the iMac has... eh... less power.
It works fine on an iMac G5 using 400-to-800 but on the Intel iMac I have to attach the optional power supply to use it.
QUESTION: Has the bus power on the MacBook Pro changed too, is it lower than on the PowerBook G4???
This IS a strange one...
Intel iMac 2gHz/500/2GB/20" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

According to a FireWire white paper distributed by WiebeTech, FireWire ports usually provide 6-15 watts. A 3,5-inch drive needs 8.
My Intel iMac is not damaged. Any 2,5-inch bus powered drive works flawlessly. I tried this 500GB drive on three iMac G5 machines, works on bus power on all of them. Tried two different PowerBook G4s and it works on bus power on them too. I have now tried three different Intel iMac Core Duo machines and it does not work on any of them so obviously Apple has lowered the FireWire bus power output to just below what this drive needs.
I sent an email to WiebeTech who confirms this as a "known issue" and they don't know how the drive works with the MacBook Pro.... YET.
I guess I will have to try it out, just have to find an MBP

High pitch whine and FireWire bus power

Delighted with my MBP!
Just noticed the high pitch whine today when I set it up in a quieter room and plugged it into an IOGear bus-powered FireWire hub shared with my other Mac.
It was around 8000 hz and loud enough that I could not stand to stay in the room with it.
When I unplugged it from the hub and connected the cable directly to the FW port, the whine was greatly attenuated (I could hear it only by putting my ear next to the vents at the top of the keyboard).
Could the problem be related to powering the FireWire bus? (It reminds me of the sound of a switching power supply or DC-DC converter) Has anyone else had any success in finding ways to attenuate this high pitch tone?
MacBookPro Mac OS X (10.4.5) 7200 rpm

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion. I'm really trying to cut down on the number of devices that I leave plugged into the mains, so would ideally like a solution that relies purely on power supplied by the internal bus.
I've had a bit of progress with my current set-up. I've switched to using a 2 headed USB lead that came with my Hard Drive. This does mean I effectively lose a USB socket, but it appears that the Hard Drive + the Webcam can now live happily together.
It just means that I have to swap the 4th USB port for whatever ad-hoc device I need to use at the time rather than leaving things connected to it.
Out of geeky curiosity, I'd still be interested to know whether the USB and Firewire buses share their power or each have a dedicated amount.
Cheers,
Ian

Did iSight blow up my firewire bus?

I was using ichat the other night when suddenly the video disappeared. the light on my isight camera went out and it was non responsive. When i went into system profiler it said the firewire bus was not there.
I shut down and tried again, no luck. I pulled the camera and tried the firewire port on the front, and it did work, but it will not on the rear.
Is it time to just bite the bullet and take it into the apple store, or is there anything else I can try to resurrect the rear firewire port?
I would think if the entire bus was fried neither port would work, but what do I know...

I was running an IO Gear firewire hub, and wonder where the problem is. I pulled the cable from it, and tried that with the isight, nothing. however the isight WILL work on the rear port with its own cable.
I am assuming the problem is actually in the cable that came with the hub, rather than the hub itself, but am holding off on testing the hub for now.

Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter: no bus power?

I got my TB to FW adapter yesterday and it worked fine with a HD using wall power but will not power a portable Iomega drive via the FW bus only. The drive light will flash once every few seconds so some power is going through, but not enough to spin up and mount the drive. Normally the light is constantly on when working.
Also the adapter will not power my MOTU Ultralite Hybrid via FireWire, but it works fine powered via the wall.
Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks for the reply. I think i just have rotten luck because i just tried an old FireLite drive and it works fine. So now all we need is a database that lists what drives work on bus power with the adapter.

Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter not enough power

Warning to those who own G-Technology G-Raid Mini (Gen3) and a Macbook Pro Retina.
I just received my thunderbolt to firewire 800 adapter from apple yesterday. I hooked it up to the rMBP and plugged in my G-Raid Mini, the G-Raid Mini powers up, but then proceeds to make a beeping noise. The G-Raid Mini will not mount over bus-power thunderbolt to firewire 800 adapter. Although when I plug the G-Raid Mini into wall with power supply and then plug in the thunderbolt to firewire 800 adapter, the drive mounts.
It seems there is not enough thunderbolt bus power to mount a G-Raid Mini (Gen3)...
Has anyone heard otherwise? Can they confirm this doesn't work for them either.
Thanks.

Same for me.
Luckily I tested it is advance of playing a gig at the weekend using Serato.
Complete JOKE!
I can't believe that Apple hasn't considered the fact that the majority of creative professionals need high capacity fast mobile storage.
I suppose we now need to wait for 2Tb Thunderboth enabled SSD drives which by my reckoning will cost more than the MacBook Pro!!!!

FireWire bus not responding

Subject says it all. At boot-up this morning, none of the FireWire devices are found. System profiler sees nothing on the FireWire Bus. Shutting down, rebooting, unplugging, plugging, powering down, powering up, all have no effect.

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work!
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that didn't work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try. Yours is the 10.4.10 Combo update ( PPC, not for Intel systems). Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still didn't get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good! Also, here is Apple doc.#88338 on getting FireWire to work.
Here's another
Fw Faq.
 Cheers! DALE

LaCie D2 Firewire 800 drives not mounting.

Hi guys,
After an OS upgrade to 10.5 I can't mount any Firewire drives to desktop. In fact, they're not even listed in System profiler, the message "*Warning:Unable to list FireWire devices*" comes up in Firewire bus section.
They worked fine under 10.4 etc, and still mount on older G4 towers all running Tiger/Panther
Any help appreciated.
System: MacBook, OS X 10.5, LaCie D2 FW800 external drives

Not likely a problem with your LaCie drives, but something related to the FireWire drivers inside your upgraded OS X 10.5 installation.
From your own words, system profiler is reporting that it is unable to list any FireWire devices.
You may want to try resetting your FireWIre bus as a first step:
shutdown your computer, and disconnect drives
remove AC power from your drives as well as your computer for a few minutes; with laptops, also remove the battery
reconnect AC to just your computer; reinstall battery if a laptop
restart computer; confirm that there is no problem in the FireWire section of your Apple System Profiler report
connect power to your FireWire drive, and reconnect to the computer. Confirm that drive is visible to both Apple System Profiler as well as Apple Disk Utility. Apply First Aid to confirm drive is OK.
If drive does not appear, or there is a problem reported with the FireWire bus, then suspect a fauly installation of OS X. Youc an boot from your Leopard OS X DVD, and use Apple Disk Utility and Apple System Profiler while booed from the DVD. This will be a clean version of the OS, and probably overcome any problems with the installed OS X.
If drive appears fine while booted from the DVD, then you will need to reinstall your OS X.
Mike

Second Firewire disk is not working in daisy chain

On a G5 2x2Ghz PPC (not mine) we wantad to install 2 external firewire HDD with a Oxford 911 chipset.
The first or second disk is seen without a problem but by daisy chaining both together it´s not seen at all.
We checked it on another identical G5 and had the same behaviour.
Any ideas? Is it a known problem?
Thanks Wolfgang

The obvious question still looms: has this configuration ever worked for you? If yes, then we have more troubleshooting to do. If no, it is most likely the firmware or something else in the drives.<</div>
These are brand new drives and no it never worked.
What happens if you shut down the Mac, unplug and power down both drives, wait 30 minutes, power up the drives and plug only the drives back into the Mac and then power up the Mac? At minimum that should reset the firewire bus.<</div>
As I said we tried it with a second identical Mac which has the same behaviour.
Why does the software care which port you use? A FireWire 800 port with a 800 to 400 cable will run at 400Mbs, the same as a 400 port.<</div>
Digi says a 400 drive should be used with the 400 port and the same with the 800. Also have all the audio drives to be at the same port (you have to do daisy chaining if you need more than 1 drive).
I bought the drives from my Apple dealer who is just selling proofed hardware and he also has no idea where the problem is coming from (no answer from stardom right now).
I just thought there is a known problem between certain drives or chipsets and the G5.
We have another 2 drives (different brand)which have no problems at all with daisy chaining, but the same here: I can chain another drive from the "faulty" drives together with the 2 working ones but not 4 in a chain.
Cheers Wolfgang

FireWire 400 & 800 Not working

I am hoping someone can help. I have an iMac running leopard 10.5.7. I had a MyBook 1TB hooked up via Firewire and piggy backed off of that was a WD 500gb firewire passport. Everything worked fine until I tried to hot swap the passport. I unplugged it and the MyBook immediately powered down. I tried hooking both of them back up and not go. I had the WD passport replaced and turns out its the iMac firewire. The new WD passport works fine on my Mybook and all the cables I have have been tested. Neither the 400 or 800 firewire are working however the USB are working just fine.
These are some of the remidies I have tried.
- Reset the PRAM (no go)
- Reset the SCM (still no go)
- Took to the apple store the only thing the genius did was boot in to Startup Manager and plug in a firewire HD. (they claim i need a new logic board $890)
Now I am avoid replacing the logic board because I still think it isn't that big of a problem. I mean it may be shorted but from what I have read if the Firewire wasn't working it wouldn't show up in the system profiler and mine is. This is what I said
FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Also I ran a hardware test that came with my mac (restarting hoding down D) and it said no hardware problems.
So now I post in hopes someone may have a suggestions before I replace the logic board.

I've had this problem, it is related to built-in firewire self-resetting fuses (which go off if there was a power surge or there was a short circuit, etc.). In order to fix it, you need to power down our Mac, then DISCONNECT THE POWER MAINS (this is important or otherwise it will not work!). Let the machine be disconnected for 2-5 minutes. Connect the mains back. Voila, it should work (the fuses get reset with no power supplied)! I spent several days until I've found this solution! Good luck!

Firewire & bus powered devices - Phonic FireFly 302 Plus

Hello Appleheads,
Looking for some help if you have a spare moment.
I just purchased a Phonic Firefly 302 Plus audio interface, and even though it is supposed to be able to be powered by the firewire bus, I am unable to get it to work. The unit's power light does not come on at all, however when using the external power supply that is also supplied it does work. I have tested two firewire cables, 1 of which I know works.
Are there any tricks to get this to work? Can you change power output settings for firewire ports somewhere in the system?
I am using a 6 circuit firewire 400 cable that came with the device. This is the only firewire device connected to my computer. The computer is connected to a power supply. Running OSX 10.6.4.
My Macbook Pro...
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Thanks for any help that anyone can provide.
Hartz.

The unit works fine with DC power. I am yet to test it on another computer to know for sure.
An interesting point has been raised to me though that has been discussed here: https://www.mhsecure.com/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=3&id=21&artlang=en&hig hlight=bus power
+The MacBook Pro models include protection circuitry to shut down the bus power when a device's inrush current amount violates a threshold. This issue affects the startup transient only, so you can power the MIO from its power supply to boot the box, then connect the FW to the computer, and remove the MIO power supply after it has joined the bus.+
Surely this threshold would be set to the maximum voltage provided on the bus? 12v?
Either way I have decided that I will just use the DC adapter.

Is there a way to manually reset firewire bus(ses)

I'm running Logic Studio (9) through an mLan Presonus Firestation and Yamaha Motif Rack XS. I have an addition al firewire card installed attached to a Focusrite Liquid Mix. The system is stable but isn't so flexible. If I change sample rates by mistake or change devices in the wrong order, the mLan system loses sync with the computer. The ONLy way to get the sync back is to close all of my audio programs and REBOOT the mac. This of course disturbs my workflow. Is there a way to reset the firewire bus(ses) through a software option without rebooting ?

I am having this same issue now but on a desktop. I have Tiger on one hard drive and Leopard on the other. I did a resetting of the NVRAM and I got my external firewire drives back - in Tiger. However when I restart up in Leopard 10.5.8 the drives will not mount, they show up in profiler so I know they are there but Leopard does not like firewire on my mirror door dual 1.25, but they all worked until a few days ago. This is my office computer where I do my student grading and other organizing, so I need my externals. Should I dump Leopard as I think I should and just go back to using just Tiger?

Bus power external drive for Intel IMac recommended?

Getting ready to replace external hard drive.I have a 2TB now that is formatted in to 2 drives, 1 for TM and 1 for clone. Told that TM needed it's own drive and should get a second for clones and other files. I can make a bootable drive out of the external but not TM drive.
I was looking at some bus-powered drives and not sure how IMac and TM on a bus powered drive would work. Am I able to consider these bus powered HD's - they have power supplies available? Can I depend on my Mac/TM to work well with a bus powered drive with an ac adaptor (because of there small size) or should I get a powered external hard drive for Time Machine and something smaller for my clone? Any ideas?
Looking at OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini, GDrive mini and the CalDigit AV drive. Open to any suggestions and using FW800.
Thanks.

I have never trusted bus powered usb devices. I use a powered multi port hub. Not only does this supply bus power to an army of usb devices (printer, scanner, camera, hard drives, etc.), the hub can be placed close to me. No need to reach for hidden usb ports, no trying to figure out which way is up on the plug ....
http://usb-hub-review.toptenreviews.com/
p.s. there are many posts here about usb devices being arbitrarily disconnected from the computer for lack of power.

Multiple Firewire Drives Do Not Load to Desktop

Hi all,
I have been using several Firewire External drives with Avid Express Pro editing system. Over the past months several firewire drives have broken down on me, increasingly loosing functionality over a period of several weeks. I have now damaged 3 external drives - two were Lacie 800+400 Pin Firewire Drives, and just recently my G-Technology Firewire Drive has also broken down.
First the drives slow down on playback, then read/write time slow down. this happens when using Avid, Final Cut Pro, or when trying to simply copy files to the drive.
Now, my current G Tech Firewire Drive will not even load to the desktop, and Disk Utilities can not find it. I have tried using both 400, 800 pin fW, and USB 2. Problem continues. I have reset ram, run tech tools cd - no problems are found.
When I plug the Firewire Drive into my iBook laptop - it loads fine and runs normally! When I run Disk Utility from the iBook it says the Firewire drives
need no repairs!
I recently connected a friend's firewire drive that had never been used on my desktop and it loaded to my G5 just fine!
What is happening? Is my G5 desktop corrupting the drives as it writes to them? It clearly has something to do with how my computer is interacting with these FW drives. Is it a firmware issue?
I am under a pressing deadline, and can't let go of this desktop for service for over a week right now.
Any suggestions much appreciated! I'm desperate to get this going!
Thanks!

Hi Tom,
Thanks for the feedback. In all cases, I've been using FW drives on their own, not daisy changed. I've tried multiple FW cables as well to confirm that it is not the cables. These 3 different drives I've had problems with each have their own separate power supply, so I don't think that's the issue.
I'll try running a copy of DiskWarriror.
However, if it's an issue of directories on the drive, wouldn't the FW Drives not work on ALL computers? Why would it function fine on any computer other then my desktop?
Any more thoughts would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Max

Firewire Bus Power - Not Needed

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