Mac pro front firewire 400 problems

[Lord Nerdos]

Greetings all,

I bought a new mac pro a couple of days ago after a very prolonged peiod of waiting and already I've come across a problem

The front firewire 400 port is not working with either a mini DV camera, not an external superdrive.

Right now the applecare lines are closed, but I wanted to know (before I call tomorrow morning):
1) Has anyone else had this problem?
2) Is there a simple way to fix this without sending my computer back?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

 

[diehardmacfan]

if you have another computer running tiger, attach the two computers via a firewire cable.

start up the other mac while holding down the T key to boot it up in target disk mode.

then boot up the mac pro normally and when you log in see if the other computer shows up as a regular firewire disk.

 

[Lord Nerdos]

Target mode works but...

Thanks for the tip!

Target mode works through the front firewire port. But my DV camera still won't link up to iMovie through it. The rear port works fine with my camera

Should I call Applecare? The whole point of getting the mac pro is to edit video and I really would like tto use the front port for the sake of convenience

Has anyone else experienced the same thing?

 

[kered22]

I've experienced the problem too, but with an external hard drive. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the Firewire implementation on the MacPro or a driver issue in OS X or what. I wrote into Macintouch about this and several others have reported similar issues not only with the FW400 ports, but the 800 ports as well.

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macpro/topic4472.html

So far Apple hasn't said anything but something is finicky somewhere, whether it is the hardware or the software is hard to say. For now, you just have to compromise and use the back port if that is what works, calling Applecare may help but won't really lead to any fixes I don't believe.

 

[Lord Nerdos]

Cheers

Thanks for your response. The link was very useful

I'll probably call Applecare just on principal. It was a lot of money and if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do then I feel they should take a look at it

Anyway, thanks you for your help!

 

[Raid]

I'm also found out that my firewire 400 ports (both front and back) are not working when I tried using "Target Disk Mode" in the migration process.

I've looked on the web and this issue is in the discussion forums, but they only suggested zapping the PRAM and unplugging the Mac Pro for 3-5 minutes. I tried all of this and still no dice, the only improvement that I noticed is that in the System Profiler more detailed information showed up on the 800 FW connection. Have you checked out what your profiler has said?

 

[Lord Nerdos]

resetting smc

Thanks for your response!

Yeah, the system profile does have a lot more info about the firewire port but still no luck with the mini DV camera...

I guess it's time to call Apple

 

[Lord Nerdos]

Found the answer

I found the following posts at the link given by kered22. Cheers mate! The link is:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macpro/topic4472.html

Wes Mac
My Firewire quit working and I fixed it. If you go to system preferences then network you will see Firewire as a network device, click on it. You will see a drop down that says dhcp, manual, etc... Just make it none. For some reason an update a while back caused the firewire port to become a network device by default. You must go into network and turn off TCP/IP on the firewire. That fixed mine. Hope that helps.
Jan. 31, 2007
Ken Tidwell
Wes Mac commented: "...an update caused the firewire port to become a network device by default."
1.) While updates have triggered stranger things, I suppose, I don't believe that the proper use of IP over FireWire hampers FireWire attached storage. I recall using them simultaneously in the past, with no restrictions.
...and...
"...go to system preferences then network...Firewire as a network device, click on it. You will see a drop down...make it none."
2.) I believe a more fundamental solution (if in fact a FireWire port has been activated for networking), is to navigate via the pulldowns to 'Show: Network Port Configurations' and then locate the item in the lower window for ||?| Built-in Firewire|| and uncheck the ON box.
Apply changes and restart. Take another look after restarting to confirm changes have been made. If no change occurs, and Built-in FireWire is still active as a network port, I would say it is time so do some proper System housekeeping and confirm all configuration basics - start in safe-mode, verify/repair permissions, create a new user with a standard account just for testing, etc.


I tried it and it works! Thanks for your help!

EDIT: Actually not perfectly... Hot swapping seems a little funny, but a restart fixes it. It becomes something that I can live with.