Firewire 400/800 problem

Interesting, I've had my ProBook 2 weeks and the firewire died today for me, too.
Nada, zip, no 400 or 800 .

Is this firewire breakdown a common problem with the new MacBook Pros?

Well, I´ve got the same problem with my DV-Cam, my Lacie FW800 hard drive and my iMac 24''. So it seem so me this is not just a problem with MacBooks.

I´ve talked to the Apple Service-Hotline in Germany and all that they came up with was "just try to restart your iMac buy pressing the apple-key alt+pr" wasn´t very impressive to me. Ah, and by the way they knew nothing about that problem. If anyone knows something, especially a solution, please let us know. i found a hint on the Apple-Support internet site about an SMC update, I´ve to check that first. If that helps I'll let you know.

regards
didi

Firewire cameras don't "mount". They need to be explicitly opened by an application, and even then they don't appear on the desktop.

To use a camera via iLink (FireWire for DV), a few things need to be done. First, make sure that the camera is a DV or DVCPRO camera. Neither FinalCut not iMovie will work with it otherwise (though the newer iMovie adds AVCHD support) . Second, the camera cannot be daisy-chained -- it must be a direct connection. The daisy-chain config it might work some but will be unreliable (it looses track of the timecode under Mac OS X; Linux on the same hardware doesn't seem to have the problem). Next, max sure that the camera is turned on and in its VTR mode. Depending on the model, this might involve changing a couple of settings on the camera and moving a switch or dial to "VCR" or "Playback".

After all of those conditions are met, start the editing application. With iMovie, you should be ready to go. If using FinalCut Express, make sure that you have it configured to use the correct FireWire profile for your camera.

I know that DV-Cam´s don´t mount, and i´ve done it exactly the way you discribed it. Still my DV-Cam stops transferring data after ca. 10 minutes and the HD doesn´t work any longer, too. The only thing that seems to work is, just connect the DV-Cam and pull the cable from my HD.

That's probably a bug in the Firewire driver. I've noted and reported several. Namely, one thing that never seems to work on a Mac (but does work on other operating systems run on the Mac hardware), is DV devices that use what Final Cut calls "FireWire Basic" (under Linux, raw1394) -- such as used by Canon camcorders -- in combination with an active hard disk (if it's idle, it's not a problem). When you do this, the Mac Firewire driver appears to drop frames and confuse Final Cut (it simply stops recording claiming it lost the timecodes, after which you need to close the app to close the connection to the camera in order to reset it). iMovie '06 used to tolerate dropped frames fairly well, but not perfectly -- I don't know about iMovie '08.

This bug is pretty well known and has been mentioned several times in the Final Cut forums and elsewhere.

I'm having exactly the same problem. only as soon as my camcorder is connected my harddrive powers down, and then my camcorder can't be found in any of the programs. Meaning I can't use the hard drive or the camera. As soon as I disconnect one or the other they work fine.

Keep us posted on how you get on. I'll try and see what I can find out as well

I had this same problem last week. I have an external Firewire 800 hard drive. When I connect a firewire 400 dv camcorder, the firewire 800 drive was ejected. I also tried just the camcorder, then tried connecting my hard drive, but it would not mount until the camcorder was removed. Summary, I could use my firewire 400 fine, and my firewire 800 fine, just not both at the same time.

I called AppleCare, was transferred to a tech rep, whom, after reading my logs, determined that both the firewire 400 & 800 ports were assigned the same address during manufacture, and that he's heard of it before. It was a simple fix, but it did involve me sending my laptop to Apple to do the internal repair. Had it back the next day. Everything works perfectly.

Just another thing you can check before sending in your computer for outpatient surgery, if you are using a Canon camcorder, make sure you connect using the "Play(VCR)" mode, not the "Network" mode. That seems to throw a wrench in the firewire fire as well.