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Be careful with M-Audio Firewire!

I had some trouble with the 410, and M-Audio made clear to me that there are some problems with external drives (spacially mine, a LaCie D2 FW800) It got to a point that I was not able to use my computer, the only temporary solution is to connect the drive to the back of the 410 with the FW400 cable until they figure out the solution.

I had this problem connecting my ibook as a firewire slave to a G5, it rendered both firewire busses fu*ked. The guys at mac say it was a short and they happen from time to time, though I'm sure any cheaper construction would add to the problem.

umm.. I may be wrong but I don't think firewire was meant to be used for networking computer to computer... at least not in its original concept. I have never heard of anyone attempting to do this. Are you sure that it is even possible? I think I would use ethernet if I wanted to network 2 computers even if not as fast as firewire.

why yes, it is possible! It's called "Firewire target disk mode". Connect two macs by firewire (one turned off) and start it up holding down the "t" key. That mac then becomes an external firewire drive to the one that is on and appears as a drive on the desktop. Sometimes you can also use the optical drive of the slaved mac too.

I do this all the time to transfer files between my Powerbook and OS 9 iMac which will not network via Ethernet without significant effort.

But once I did have a problem. The powerbook was the slave and it (the powerbook) decided to shut down randomly during a small file transfer. I had to rebuild my directory using techtool deluxe, but everything works now, no hardware problems.

This M-audio firewire thing sounds nasty. Good luck guys.

This post has been edited by arvidtp: Tue 22 Jun 2004, 16:46

hmm... well I guess I stand corrected and learned something new

never knew it was possible before

Ain't this just special. We have discovered that our products may cause your computer serious damage. Thank you for letting us help you avoid rightfully returning our dangerous and defective products for a full refund or brand new replacement, by going through this 26 step procedure. If your Mac suffers expensive damage, we are sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for choosing M-Audio.

My firewire 410 has been spitting flames (sparking and clicking) for a month, and I thought I was doing something wrong. M Audio is gonna suffer big time headaches if they don’t respect their customers and take an exchange refund or replacement hit on their pocket books. M-audio is a big company and can afford the temporary hit. The fact that they are gonna “help us not to blow our computers (gee, thanks),” is really quite arrogant and irresponsible.

If they do the right thing, I remain an M-Audio customer, but now I don’t trust them. They just put a small percentage of their net profits before the long term respect of their loyal return customers. Lovely. Well, guess they are gonna have to learn ethical business the hard way. It used to be that the customer was always right. But now the customer is always at fault for the failure of some company to back up their products.

Blessings,
Damon

_____"Did you plug the box into the wall?"
_____"Um, yes. That is what the instructions said."
_____"You did not read the fine print, did you?"
_____"What fine print?""
_____“The part that said that using this product as recommended in the manual may cause serious damage to your computer”
_____“Huh...?”
_____“If you had been more careful, and chosen to NOT properly follow the instructions, as instructed in the fine print, I might have been able to offer you a refund. But as you choose to follow the instructions, though were instructed not to, I am afraid you are on your own. ”
_____“But that is insane!”
_____“Sorry, Sir. You are just gonna have to take responsibility for your mistakes. Thank you for choosing X- Audio.”
_____“But I was just following what the instruction man....”

_____“CLICK! brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..... BING!”

“To speak with a technical representative with a foreign accent, please, press 48”
“To register pre-registered, though formally un-registerable products, purchased during the second week of March (if 3 days before a full moon) and the salmon are running good Jim! please, press 62”
“To register complaints about computers that have gone up in flames, though we are not legally responsible cause you chose to read the manual you big moron, please, press 86...”
“To end this silly, though somehow appropriate, post, please, press my (euphemism for big hairy bottom) region”

I guess we learn something new everyday, and loose something too!!!!

I too had probs with the FW 410 - forced restarts and FireWire bus conflicts. It would never go off either (even if my Panther 10.3.4/eMac 1.25 was sleeping). Very unsettling. Returned it for a Tascam US-122 and haven't looked back since.

Hmm... I had problems with FW410's older drivers, but using the latest drivers everything works fine since months. I'm using an iBook G3/700 as well as a LaCie Pocket Drive plugged into the FW410; hot-plugging. But thanks for the warning.

Regarding computer connection over FireWire, it doesn't end with the Target Disk Mode: A new feature of Panther was (is) TCP Over FireWire, i.e. *networking* over FW. It works. (However I don't use it because my router doesn't have a FW bus...) FW in its concept *is* intended for flexible use.

Dying FW Ports in general are nothing new, it's a long known problem with G4 PowerMacs. The ports on my G4/466 died one month after my 3 year AppleCare warranty expired...
The easiest fix is a FW PCI card, the drawback is the lack of the "deep sleep" mode thereafter, obviously it's not compatible with this kind of cards.