Firewire device assignments -- permanent?

Running 10.4.7 on a G4 XServe, 2GB RAM, two Exabyte VXA-2 Firewire tape drives attached. BRU server.
The problem, of course, is that once in a blue moon a service reboot brings the firewire tape drives up in the opposite order, and what was ntape0 is now ntape1 and vice-versa. BRU, trusting the OS definitions, starts writing to the wrong device.
I will admit that I saw this coming, but after months of consistent performance I stopped worrying about it.
Is there a way that I can force a particular firewire device assignment in OS X Server? I would like to run a script at login that probes the tape drives and reassigns IDs accordingly.
Thanks very much!

1st look at your "audio midi setup" and see if the FW divice is recognized by your mac. if it is not it is a driver problem. contact the company and ask them if they are intel UB compatable
if the device is in Audio midi step, then look in Logic under Preferences/audio/driver and select you divice there

Similar Messages

Firewire device not being detected

Hi! First time here, and hoping for some wise counsel! I have an audio control interface (M-Audio Project Mix I/O)running from my G5 via Firewire connection.
Following a brief power interuption, during which both device and Mac were 'on', the power was immediately restored, and I had to restart the Mac, but the Project Mix came back on with the power. Since this my Mac won't detect the control interface (I've reloaded the software and tried to re-establish the link through the software but no joy).
The M-Audio support site has a warning about permanent damage being caused to Firewire ports through 'hot-plugging' and I'm beginning to wonder if this may be the case here when the power was disrupted and then immediately restored.
How can I tell if this has happened? And if it has, can I do anything about it?
HELP!!!!
Thanks in advance to anyone who can advise! Bill

billnw1-
Try the ubiquitous SMU reset and see if that helps.
This document about what to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device may be helpful.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Disappearing Firewire Device

Since the day I got my iMac (which means the day it came out) I have been using an external firewire hard drive for my data. Today, after a few hours away from the machine, I came back to find that the icons for the drive (it's partitioned in two) were gone. "Huh?" I say, and reboot. Same thing. I turn the machine off and on again... same thing. I repair permissions... same... check the system profiler... no sign of firewire devices. I turn everything off for 5 minutes or so, plus the firewire cable into the other firewire port on the back of the computer.. and my data drive is back.
Anyone else run into something like this? Needless it to say, it makes me very uncomfortable to think that my data might disappear permanently at any moment.

It's a 200 GIG Maxtor encased in a Macally PHR-100AC.
Everything's run fine for the past 24 hours... so, knock on wood. I still feel uncomfortable that drives would suddenly disappear in the first place, though.

Firewire devices no longer showing

This afternoon - for the first time in years - no firewire device showed up either on the Desktop or in the Apple Profiler.
Restarted several times with no success.
Devices on Firewire 400 (via bus) external CD reader/writer and DVD ditto.
Devices on Firewire 800, three LaCie drives linked together. Tried each one separately, no success.
Which is bit of a pain, these being my backup and ancillary storage devices ...
Disconnected them all. Restarted G5. Closed down and left G5 for half-an-hour (following a suggestion in a forum). Reconnected, restarted; no joy.
Console message includes:
Jun 6 14:50:03 localhost kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 42 built-in now active, GUID 001124ff fe86cb20; max speed s800.
and then, at the bottom of the report:
Jun 6 14:52:47 SarahJane kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 42 built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 2 minutes after bus reset.
Jun 6 14:55:59 SarahJane kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 42 built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 2 minutes after bus reset.
Jun 6 14:59:11 SarahJane kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Apple ID 42 built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 2 minutes after bus reset.
Can anyone help, please? I've run all the usual things, hardware check, diskwarrior, techtool (though none of these seem to check the firewire bus).

Right - had a look through, and after two attempts (mutter mutter and splutter curses) got everything going again.
The cure was, in this case, as listed in your first link: disconnect computer etc.
The first time the CD reader came back but the external drives wouldn't, so I said a few words that my wife would not approve of, then tried again but this time connected the (800 fw) external drives first, and then, when the buggers showed up, connected the cd drive on the 400 cable. I think the dvd drive on the 400 has died, so I'll leave that disconnected.
Oh it's a great machine when it's running right, it's a lovely gadget to play with; but when something goes wrong it can be very frustrating ...
I sometimes wish I'd had one of these when I was still at school and a little quicker on the uptake.

Problem connecting Firewire device and external HD at the same time

Hi. I'm attempting to record digital audio through a Presonus Firepod A/D interface via a Firewire 400 to 800 cable connected to one of the Firewire 800 ports on a mid-2010 Mac Pro running Snow Leopard.
The problem is that if I have an external HD connected to one of the other Firewire 800 ports on the computer and powered on at the same time, the connection to the Presonus Firewire device is not recognized by the Mac Pro. Not only that, performance of the Mac Pro is affected adversely and System Profiler is unable to list any Firewire devices. If I turn the external HD off, the Presonus device is recognized and listed in System Profiler and the machine runs fine. I'm able to connect two external hard drives via separate Firewire 800 ports on the Mac Pro and both drives mount w/ no problem. It's only when I try to connect one of the external HDs and the Presonus audio device at the same time that the problem occurs.
I used this same arrangement on a PowerMac G5 running Tiger w/ no problems whatsoever. If the 400 to 800 cable is bad, I would think it wouldn't work at all, but it does when only the Presonus Firepod is connected and powered on. Any ideas?

Have done more research and apparently this is not an uncommon problem: overloading the Firewire bus when connecting an audio device along with an additional device like an external hard drive. As I understand it now, audio signal is a bandwidth hog and the solution is to get a Firewire PCIe card which will have its own independent Firewire bus and which I'll use exclusively for my audio device.

Using Firewire devices results in desktop stuttering

Firewire traffic is causing desktop performance to decline. On my Mac Mini (late 2009, 4 GB RAM) even slow amounts of firewire traffic is causing bad spaces performance (stuttering while moving from space to space) and jerky window movement. I have tested this with several cables and 2 different firewire devices. Device 1, a Canon HDV camcorder, is bringing the window movement to stutter when imovie is detecting the connection and showing the import screen (no transfer initiated, not even playback). Device 2, a Western Digital My Book Studio with FW800 ports, is making the desktop jerky even if it is only playing a mp3 file.
Notes:
Spotlight was disabled on the mentioned fw800 hdd. Disk activity monitor shows normal operation, very low cpu workload. The system log also does not show any suspicious messages.
USB devices like harddisks do not trigger this behaviour. The mentioned fw800 disk also has an USB port. Connecting the device using USB does not slow down desktop performance, even when transfering large files.

Thanks for you suggestions. I tried them out (and some more).
Here are the results:
You can test to see if the Virtual Memory system is getting overworked by running Utilities Activity >Monitor, click on the System Memory tab and look at PageOuts and PageIns.
I kept an eye on the virtuel memory for a while now. Seems to be fine, even after hours of my usual working procedure there are virtually no page outs.
But if your ratio is good (10% or less), then I'm would suspect instead that you need to re-install a >full combo update of the latest version of OSX.
I reinstallad the 10.6.4 Combo Update. No difference.
Then I installed a fresh copy of OSX on the firewire drive. Running an unpatched OS from the drive is not bad in regards of system response time (actually it's pretty good). But the desktop jerkyness is present all the time.
Then (after switching back to my internal drive again) I stopped keeping an eye on window movement etc. and tried out some games. The results: There is a major difference in performance when the fw drive is working in the background in contrast to an usb2 drive (or even the same fw drive attached using usb). When I am playing the game (in this case it was an opengl port of Doom) there is virtually no performance penalty when I am playing the game while transfering a huge file to an usb2 drive in the background. But when I am transfering a file to the FW drive, there is huge drop in frames per second (roughly 25 - 30 %).
I am wondering if this has anything to with fact that firewire is using dma access to the system memory (in contrast to usb) an there is some sort of congestion on the memory bus. Especially since my issues are linked to gpu performance and the 9400M in the Mini uses shared memory.

OS X Mavericks won't recognize firewire device

I updated to mavericks and my firewire device is no longer recognized. It is an alesis io 26. i use it for home recording. The system preferences won't recognize it, and my software program (logic pro8) will not recognize it either.

Not so sure Logic 8 is compatible with Mavericks:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/23971178#23971178
MtD

Firewire device looses connection when external screen is inserted into the thunderbolt port? HELP

HI
I am a recording studio engineer. Ive got a Firewire AD/DA Converter (Focusrite Saffire Pro 56) running from my Firewire port of my MacBook Pro, which is running OSX Mavericks. I've also got an external Screen I want to use as an extended display. I'm using a HDMI cable from the screen to a HDMI to Thunderbolt Converter which I then plug into my Thurderbolt Port.
As soon as I plug the screen in, the Firewire Port looses connection completely and I cant use or even choose the Saffire Pro 56 as audio driver. Another thing happens where the Thunderbolt port replaces the Saffire Pro 56 Driver with the screen as the audio output source.
Please help, there's nothing I can find to fix this.
Thanks Maurice

You don't mention which model you have, but this is from the M-Audio Firewire 410 Manual Troubleshooting section:
The FireWire 410 has been designed to give you high performance and professional quality audio. It has been tested under a wide range
of systems and operating conditions. In the real world, however, there is a nearly infinite number of possible operating scenarios, any of
which could affect your system’s performance. Much like owning an automobile, “your mileage may vary.” This section can not begin to
cover all possible issues you may encounter, however we want to give you some suggestions on common problems you may experience.
One thing to avoid is connecting too many devices. The FireWire bus is a dependable, high-speed, high-bandwidth protocol which is ideally
suited for digital audio. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that audio and multimedia streaming places considerable demands on
your processor and the FireWire bus. Although it is theoretically possible to chain many multiple FireWire devices in series, doing so may
potentially degrade your audio performance.
I guess this degradation could also affect the Firewire HD. Maybe there is a simple fix, but it sounds like the M-Audio people have been down this road before.

Anyone able to mount more than 3 firewire devices on their Alum 2.4 imac?

Hi.
I can't power up more than 3 firewire devices or my imac kicks everything off. I have 2 Lacie 1T drives piggybacked on the 800 port and then a powered firewire hub plugged into the 400 port. I can have either another firewire external HD OR an external Cd/Dvd recorder plugged into the hub. If I try both (or any combination of 2 firewire devices) - the imac kicks everything off firewire, both on the 800 port and the 400 port. All my devices have their own external power supply. It also doesn't matter how I chain the drives. I can have 3 on the 800 port but then nothing on the 800 port.
This is a bummer for me. I migrated from a Dual G5 2GB with 4 external HDs and an 2nd external DVD writer attached. My drives are 2 1Ts, a 800 GB and a 400 GB. I do a lot of photography and video editing so I really need the external space. I guess this imac really isn't a "Pro" model but I didn't need any more speed and I wanted to save space and money. And I love the 24" screen. I think Apple should say up-front if there are significant limits to the imac's Firewire capabilities.
Are any of you you able to attach 4 firewire devices at one time? If so, then I guess my machine is defective and I'll start working with Apple on exchanging it. Please let me know.
Thanks

I think you should be able to do much more than 4 - I believe the theoretical maximum is somewhere at 20+ devices (if they are self-powered). I don't have a 24inch but instead a 20 inch but I'm running three HDs and one DVD drive and in fact, all daisy-chained onto one single firewire port on the Mac. Do your external drives have two ports or just one? In the former case, you might want to try skipping the hub and just daisy-chaining them. I've never owned a firewire hub so I don;t know if they can be touchy but you might want to give it a shot.
Andrew

Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor does not work when daisy chaining firewire devices

Hi,
I just purchased the Thunderbolt to firewire adaptor for my new late 2012 iMac.
It works when connecting a single firewire device, but when I daisy chain another drive, the first drive disconnects and nothing mounts.
I am trying a Hitachi G-Raid and a couple of WD My Studio II hard drives. They all work when connected directly to the adaptor, but not when more than one drive if daisy chained with firewire.
Has anyone got firewire daisy-chaining working with a thunderbolt adaptor? (just to clarify I am not refering to thunderbolt daisy chaining, as the adaptor is an end-of-chain thunderbolt device).
Thanks

Yikes, that's sad to hear.
I can't test it, no TB here, but are all these drives self AC powered, ie. no bus powered drives?

Attaching VGA video adapter and Firewire device

I'm using the VGA video adapter to attach my brand new Mac mini to a VGA screen. As the space between video port and Firewire port is too narrow with the VGA video adapter attached I can't connect any Firewire cable!
Anyone who knows how to connect VGA video adapter and Firewire device at the same time?

The DVI-VGA adapter I got with my last mini was barely wider than the video port on the back of the mini and since a firewire connector is also barely wider than the FW port itself, there was no problem connecting to both at the same time, with a small but distinct space between. Indeed, it's about the same space as between the adapter and a cable plugged into the nearest of the USB ports on the other side.
If you're having problems, you might find that connecting the firewire cable first might help, but otherwise either the adapter or the connector on your firewire cable is non-standard. If you still can't connect both, take the mini, along with your firewire cable and the DVI-VGA adapter to an Apple store and ask them to try.

Trying to use FireWire devices with a W540 through a Thunderbolt adapter

We have a camera that we need to use that has FireWire 800 as its sole interface, and because it needs to be mobile we had to use it with a laptop. After some research we decided that the best course of action was to purchase a ThinkPad W540 and connect the camera to the Thunderbolt port with a Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter, as this should give us plenty of bandwidth for the camera.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to connect any FireWire devices to the laptop in this way. We have tried connecting both the camera and a FireWire hard drive through the adapter, and while the power lights will come on for both devices the computer resolutely refuses to even acknowledge their existance.
I have tried everything that I can think of to get this to work, updating all of the dirvers on the laptop, checking all of the settings in the BIOS, and searching the forums for similar issues, but now I have run out of ideas. What can I do to get this laptop to play nice with my FireWire devices?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Good afternoon and welcome to the community.
Sorry you're having issues using a Thunderbolt-2-Firewire adapter.
Not much I can offer on that as I've never used one, but an alternative might be to try an Expresscard Firewire adapter. A number of them I've seen offer 2 ports, so that might be useful also.
Regards.
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G5 xserve: How do I boot from a FireWire device ?

Hi.
I have a PowerPC G5 server WITHOUT a keyboard/display and have just installed Leopard 10.5.1.
After setting up Leopard, I made a backup copy of the server HD onto a Lacie FireWire hard-drive device connected to the FireWire 400 port on the front-panel using Carbon Copy Cloner v3.
The backup appeared to work fine.
However, when I tried to boot from the FireWire device by holding down the system identified button at the same time as the on/standby button and then selecting Light 4 (to quote page 65 of the G5 User Guide… “bypass the current startup disk and start up from any other available startup disk”) nothing happened. Instead, the fans just got louder and louder and louder and louder, with the occasional flash of FireWire device and HD lights. I switched it off after 10 minutes and re-booted as normal from the HD device.
Any suggestions ?
Thanks in advance,
john

Tony,
Having thought about this and read Apple's article "how to use FireWire target disk mode" (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583), let me play back what I think have to do...
Assumptions...
a) A working Leopard system.
b) I want to go back to yesterday's backup.
c) I can't use Time Machine as it's an "Advanced" install.
d) My backup is done via Carbon Copy Clone onto my external FireWire device.
Is this what I would do... ?
1) Get my PowerBook G4 laptop, which is also running Leopard !
2) Switch off the Xserve G5.
3) Connect the FireWire backup to THE LAPTOP !
4) Connect the laptop to the Xserve using a FireWire cable.
5) Switch on the G5 and hold down the system identifier button.
6) When the lights rotate select Light 5 "Begin target disk mode".
7) On the laptop an icon would appear which is the Xserve HD.
8) Using the laptop, I then copy from the FireWire backup to the Xserve HD icon.
(I guess, as the fans may be running flat out at this point !)
9) After the backup then eject the Xserve HD icon.
10) Disconnect FireWire cable.
11) Re-boot Xserve
12) Should be running yesterday's backup.
13) Relax !
Blimey !
john

Using Firewire devices with your MacBook

My wife recently purchased a new MacBook and decided that she wanted to try editing video from our camcorder. We have a Sony DCR-HC26 with firewire and USB 2.0 ports. If necessary, we can use the software provided by Sony and the USB port to import the video but Sony says that the video quality is much better using the firewire port. Unfortunately, Apple chose not to provide a firewire port on the new MacBook and there are no ports for installing a card. Is anyone aware of options available to use firewire devices with your MacBook? It seems as though this would be a common problem given the number of legacy firewire devices out there. I researched adapters but the only one I found is currently only supported by Windows XP and that doesn't do us any good. Thanks for the help.

The current white Macbook and the Macbook Pro has Firewire.
http://www.apple.com/macbook/white/
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/
There are no USB to Firewire adapters. (Desperate aluminum Macbook owners are looking, but it can't be done.) Firewire MUST be in the computer.

Missing firewire devices

For some reason my G5 dual 1.8 has stopped recognizing my sony firewire devices in FCP 5.0.4 (PD150 camera, DSR20 Deck, Z1U, etc.). A friend has suggested that I need to reinstall my system (10.4.6).
Any other (less time consuming) thoughts?
TIA,
Jay

I've seen one other post about this and I've tried the responses to it: trash prefs, rebuild permissions, reboot the computer (let it rest and uplug), trash quicktime receipts and reinstall, uninstall AJA software and reinstall.
The only thing I haven't tried is reinstalling my OS.
I'm on FCP HD.
I can capture and print to tape as an uncontrollable device. But I need to edit to tape tomorrow using the RS-422 to my digibeta deck via the AJA IO. It has worked in the recent past (last month), but in the past two weeks I can't control my deck.
Also, I get the message "This computer does not have any serial ports required by this protocol" when I try to set up a new RS-422 AV device control setting.
Help!
G4 Dual GB (Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.3.9) with AJA IO

Firewire device assignments -- permanent?

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