Firewire 410 - No Firewire Networking?!? Options

[Kid_A]

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.

[monkeyboy23]

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.

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.