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Terminate FireWire chains to prevent problems System
This might be something that users are aware of, but I wasn't and was bitten by it. Under OS X, and possibly other OSs, there is an issue with attaching multiple FireWire devices which are not terminated. I have an external Firewire HD attached to my PowerBook and had attached a Sony video camera to the second port on the back of the HD and the PowerBook was able to "see" the camera and download video even though the Firewire drive wasn't actually powered up.

The problem arose when I detached the video camera, but still had a Firewire cable attached to the secondary port on the HD. The next day, not realizing that there would be an issue, and frankly forgetting that the cable was still attached, I attempted to power up and access the HD. OS X 10.2.3 could find the drive but couldn't mount it and wanted to initialize it. "This is a problem," I thought. I had a lot of information I needed on that drive. I tried to access the HD several times, trying other things but nothing seemed to work. I booted into OS9 to see if it might be an OS X issue but the same thing happened: No external HD.

Then it occurred to me – didn't I still have that movie camera cable hooked to the drive. I pulled the cable off and OS9 gave me an icon. I booted into OSX and was able to see and access the drive with no difficulty. So, the moral is: make sure the Firewire chain is terminated with a device!
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Terminate FireWire chains to prevent problems | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Check Knowlege base on this
Authored by: summutha on Jan 16, '03 11:37:44AM
Apple support departments have always maintained that you
should remove the FireWire cable from the CPU end first.
Additionally I have many devices that have the same instructions:
DO NOT REMOVE THE FIRE WIRE CABLE FROM THE DEVICE BEFORE YOU HAVE REMOVED IT FROM THE CPU.
This advice is contained in the manual for my FWB Hard Drive. Just after the warining to "Eject" the drive before disconnecting the drive.
And Don't Say it, yes I have read the odd manual here or there :D

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iPod cable
Authored by: krove on Jan 16, '03 11:38:13AM

I sometimes leave my iPod cable in the end of the firewire HD without problem.



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iPod cable
Authored by: usa35 on Jan 16, '03 11:54:38AM

I do too, and am now wondering if the iPod cable is terminated in some way. Now that I think about it, there was a warning that came with my iPod (original 5GB model) about only using the Apple approved Firewire cable with the iPod.

Perhaps they figured people would be leaving their iPod cable attached and just detaching the iPod? Is the iPod provided cable special in some way?

Does anybody have information to share on this?



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Chaining vs. direct connect...
Authored by: robg on Jan 16, '03 01:25:34PM

I .think. this problem only occurs with chained devices, ie Computer -> Device 1 -> Device 2. Remove Device 2's cable and Device 1 may no longer work. I experienced this while travelling with a 20gb FW drive and a FW camera; when I disconnected the camera and left the cable attached, the drive wasn't happy.

But at home, I leave the camera cable plugged directly into the back of the Mac all the time, and have no trouble...

-rob.



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Chaining vs. direct connect...
Authored by: Anonymous on Jan 16, '03 01:52:23PM

me too, no problem with my always attached ipod cable.

the passthrough ports on firewire drives are known to be somewhat flaky, so it doesn't surprise me that they couldn't handle a cable without an attached device.

lets stay away from the word "terminate" as its old SCSI terminology. (I'm very sure there's no such thing as a terminated firewire cable)



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Chaining vs. direct connect...
Authored by: Mikey-San on Jan 16, '03 02:26:55PM

FireWire "termination" exists. It is not outdated SCSI terminology. The difference here is that it's done /automatically/ in FireWire, all the time. The extra two pins on your FW port (vs your PC friends' crappy 4-pin FW ports) are for termination power.

Yes, you're supposed to disconnect the cable from the FireWire controller first (read: TEH COMPUTAR!!1); no, there is nothing special about the cable that comes with the iPod; and no, not all chain pass-through ports suck. As a matter of fact, the ports on my LaCie FireWire drive kick much ass.


-/-



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Chaining vs. direct connect...
Authored by: imageworx on Jan 16, '03 04:11:26PM

I am looking at the back of my Qksilver 800 and I have one wired (not connected) and another (chained to two CDRs and a DVDRAM). Never have bootup or corruption issues.
Might be isolated incident.

Then again, I have all Granite Digital FW cables with the bright green LED.

"Remember-don't ever force the FW cable into the slot. Someone one did and friend their board and drive" +20volts can be bad...



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Chaining vs. direct connect...
Authored by: timbloom on Jan 20, '03 06:46:50PM

Those 2 pins you see there are the 12V power coming from the CPU that charges your ipod and keeps bus powered devices running. Firewire does not need "termination" in the sense of scsi because it is a serial- based interface.



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I have the problem
Authored by: dfbills on Jan 16, '03 07:58:12PM

I have the "lost device" problem with my setup.

Here's my setup and usage:

I plug a firewire drive into one firewire port on my powerbook 500 and my ipod into the other port on the laptop. I charge and sync the ipod every night and take it with me to work during the day.

About once every other week, the hard drive is mysteriously disconnected from the computer, requiring a restart. I always leave the ipod cord plugged into the computer.



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Not an isolated incident
Authored by: ikioi on Jan 16, '03 08:52:01PM

I had similar problems, and I'm pretty excited to see the solution. My only drive is a Maxtor
firewire drive which I boot from. I chain an iPod to it, and sometimes when I reboot with the
iPod cable attached to the disk (but iPod disattached), the machine can't boot the OS. I get the folder with a flashing question mark as if my boot drive was unreadable.



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Firewire causing a slowdown...
Authored by: talus on Jan 16, '03 09:04:47PM

At risk of going off topic, I had been chaining my camcorder off my Lacie CDR and doing a bunch of pluging and unpluging of the firewire cables (both from the device and the CPU) when I suddenly experienced a massive system slowdown. OS X apps and windows were painfully slow, and an OS X boot took about 5+ minutes. A look at process viewer showed nothing out of the ordinary. I tried booting into OS 9 and got a bomb. But booting from an OS 9 CD was OK. Finally I unplugged all the firewire devices and rebooted - things were back to a normal. I then plugged the firewire devices back in and life is great. Thought this might help someone.



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