Firewire 800 to 400 cable MacBook Pro Final Scratch 2 FS2 not recognizing

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Firewire 800 to 400 cable MacBook Pro Final Scratch 2 FS2 not recognizing

I just bought a firewire 800 to firewire 400 conversion cable so I could use my new MacBook Pro with my old Final Scratch 2.0 box, and when I plug it in nothing appears in the audio config options for Audio Settings or in Mixvibes Cross DJ program.

I have used the FS2 with a fire400 cable on Leopard just fine, but this is Snow Leopard with a fire800 port. All of the options are the same. This should be plug n play just like it has been for my mac mini G4 and intel chip workhorses.

The FS box lights up the left-most led for a blink when I plug the cable in, so it is getting bus power...

Thanks for any help. I was soooo excited to use this macbook, and it smokes through loading my audio library.

I do know that firewire 400 is 8 pin and fire800 is 6 pin... does that f it up?

DJ Clint
http://www.kansascityvinyldjs.com/
http://www.djs4kansascity.com/
Any thoughts?

MacBook Pro 2.26ghz 13", Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 3, 2009 8:50 PM

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Answer 1

djclintoris Author

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Oct 4, 2009 3:10 PM in response to djclintoris

I have tried the fire800-fire400 cable on other hard drives and an external dvd drive...

The cable did not work for any of them, but when I used usb2.0 for the devices, they worked just fine.

My brand new cable is bad or the 8-pin fire400 does not transfer well to the 6-pin fire800.

Please pass this around to anyone who knows more about the changes from 400-800.

Thanks apple,

DJC

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Answer 2

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Oct 4, 2009 3:25 PM in response to djclintoris

I have an Iomega drive that works with FireWire 400 and 800 (as well as USB 2). When I connect the drive to my new MBP with a FireWire 800 cable, the FireWire 400 ports on the drive work fine for adding FireWire 400 accessories.

I suspect your adapter cable is bad.

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Answer 3

Oct 4, 2009 6:13 PM in response to F Shippey

I agree with shippy. The cable must be bad. I bought 2 FW 800>400 cables and my old FW400 DVD burner and HD worked perfectly.

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Answer 4

djclintoris Author

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Oct 8, 2009 4:54 PM in response to F Shippey

Thanks. I finally found the section in the 1394 specs where it says firewire 400 (fw400) is compatible with fw800, and will continue to be compatible thru fw1600 and fw3200.

I got a new 1 meter cable to replace the 5m cable I had tested. The spec also says 15 feet is the max length before a repeater is needed. Maybe the MBP port could not juice that length of cable...

All products work fine with the MBP FW800 port: LaCie HD, External DVD burner, and Stanton Final Scratch 2.0.

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Answer 5

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Oct 8, 2009 7:19 PM in response to djclintoris

Just for the record, FW400 is 6-pin (4-pin on some self-powered devices like camcorders) and FW800 is 9-pin.

I'm glad to hear a new cable has resolved your problem.

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