Recently my Power Mac G5 got hung up (had to force power down) a couple of times. After some trouble shooting I realized it was happening only when the FireWire 410 was hooked up (and turned on.) I went to the M-Audio website and saw this article under the knowledge base saying that you can not network over a firewire IEEE 1394 connection while using the device. I was thrown off by this because that was saying I couldn't be hooked to (recording to) an external FW drive while using the box. I called the support line and they said this was true and that I would have to purchase a firewire 400 card to get around this problem. (He sounded a bit frustrated like I wasn't suppose to ask that question.) A couple questions. Does it sound reasonable for a firewire interface to have this limitation? Has anyone else had this problem (from what the guy said it sounds like only some people have this issue though they say no one should attempt the network connection.) Do the Presonus interfaces have this issue? Is firewire IEEE 1394 firewire 400, 800, or could be either? And lastly, does the firewire 400 port in the back of a G5 run of a seperate bus (or card) than the one on the front? If yal could let me know I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

P.S. This is my first post here at MacMusic!
P.S.S. I have up to date drivers and am running 10.4.6.

Hi,

That's really strange, because i have a Firewire 410 (for 2 years now), conected to a Powerbook G4/867,
and on the second firewire connection of the 410, i've got 2 external HD's and a DVD recorder, all conected
in daisychain, and sometimes in the end i connect my dv camcorder, and nothing like that ever happened to me.
I digitize lots of audio to one of the externals HD, through the 410, i've got the last driver from m-audio, that
gave some glintchs (never happend before), sometimes the 410 freezes, and no audio output, the only thing i have to do is in the 410 control mixer, reset the device and every thing is normal, but apart from that,
all works well.

CS

You're lucky you caught it when you did. I currently have 80 GB's of unbacked up work sitting on an unused FW IEEE 1394 drive. I ran into the same problem and ended up with a wounded drive, I'm working on an Intel Mac and Disk Warrior isn't supported yet, basically I'm just praying they'll come through and soon!! Otherwise that's a lot of work down the drain. I'm glad you posted that though, I had a suspicion that was the reason they didn't work together, but now I know for sure.
Good luck and thanks!
-Strype

Welcome!

You misunderstood the knowledge base article. It is talking about not using the audio interface if you are using the firewire port to connect to a network, as in computer network. Having a external firewire hard drive does not mean you are networking to the hard drive. The fact that the M-Audio rep was such a total moron isn't too surprising.

You have an issue though. What software do you use with the 410? What kind of error are you getting? Hung up is vague.... kernal panics? Just freezes with an unresponsive cursor? It's hard to say without more info, but you can always start by trashing whatever preferences your app and interface are using.

Presonus makes good interfaces, but M-Audio stuff works as well. It's not that the 410 is a piece of crap, it works for a lot of people.

IEEE 1394 is just the firewire spec number. I don't think 800 has it's own spec, could be wrong.

The firewire ports are on the same circut...if one of them goes out, the other usually does. If the firewire drive works on the port, it's fine though. I have a firewire 400 card because at one point my firewire ports stopped working on my G5. Several months later they came back on... so now I have a ton of firewire ports.

Welcome!

When you have any error, it's always wise if you don't have a clue to look at the console (~/applications/utilities/Console), there's a lot of chances the error is recorded there and it can help finding the one at fault. It's not a fun reading though…