Firewire Dead? how do you test it?

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Level 1

130 points

Firewire Dead? how do you test it?

none of our firewire drives are mounting. occasionally in system profiler it says "unknown device" but more recently we get this:

"FireWire Bus:
Warning: Unable to list FireWire devices.
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec"

i ran both TTP and the hardware test from the original restore disks, TTP doesn't have a firewire test, and apple hardware test turned up no errors after multiple detailed checks.

is there a hardware test that can be done to test the firewire bus? or should TTP and apple hardware test find it?

2.66 dual dual macPro, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 5GB ram

Posted on Feb 25, 2009 9:31 AM

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Answer 1

direwolf8

Level 4

1,280 points

Feb 25, 2009 1:50 PM in response to austin m

Have you tried plugging in just one firewire device at a time? A lot of people have found that a single device can prevent the system from recognizing all the other firewire devices that are also connected. Unplug any USB devices (other than keyboard and mouse) too, in case a storage device is the problem.

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Answer 2

Ricktoronto

Level 6

11,560 points

Feb 27, 2009 12:37 PM in response to austin m

You can try resetting the FW bus buy unplugging all FW devices and unplugging the computer for 15 minutes. Then restart and plug in one device at a time.

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