freebsd 5.2.1-RELEASE, 4 pin laptop firewire ports, and 6 pin firewire hard disk drives

[Jesse Guardiani]

Hidetoshi Shimokawa wrote:

> At Tue, 23 Mar 2004 09:22:29 -0500,
> Jesse Guardiani wrote:
>> 
>> Hidetoshi Shimokawa wrote:
>> 
>> > I think you understand correctly and assume your hub has some problem
>> > for providing bus power. Connect G4 powerbook, thinkpad and 2.5" HDD to
>> > the hub at the same time and see what happens.
>> 
>> I did that. Nothing happened. I even unmounted the drive from the
>> powerbook.
> 
> Does the laptop recognize powerbook/hub/hdd?

Not that I could tell. I was watching my root console the entire time.


> The output of 'fwcontrol -t' should help.

I tried a `fwcontrol -r` and nothing happened on the root console. I'm not
sure if I tried `fwcontrol -t` or not. I'll try that tommorrow and see if
I get any different output.


> Another possibility is cable problem.
> Did you try with several 4pin-6pin cables?

Not with the powerbook attached. I went to a local computer store and tried
a different 4 pin to 6 pin cable with just the hub, hdd, and my 4 pin laptop.

I don't think I'll get a chance to test with another cable either. I guess
I need some way to verify that:

a.) The port on my laptop isn't bad.
b.) The 6pin to 4 pin adapter I'm using isn't bad.
c.) My cable lengths aren't too long for some reason.

I'll see what I can think of...


>> I'm about to give up on the 4 pin firewire port that comes with my
>> laptop. So, I guess at this point I have these questions:
>> 
>> 1.) Has ANYONE on this list actually gotten a firewire hdd (or
>> cd-rom/dvd-rom,
>>     I suppose) to work with a 4 pin firewire port? If so, what hardware
>>     did you use?
> 
> I believe many people(including me) use SBP-2 device with 4-pin port.

Is there a chance that my hdd is not SBP-2?

Could you describe, in detail, the devices you use, including cabling, hubs,
and power sources?


>> 2.) Does anyone know of a 6 pin firewire cardbus card that works well
>> with
>>     FreeBSD?
> 
> Though there might be some problem with cardbus bridge,
> most of the card should work with FreeBSD as far as it's based on OHCI.

Yeah. But I'm looking for a specific card so I don't get burnt. Does anyone
here have one they like?

Thanks!

-- 
Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator
WingNET Internet Services,
P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605
423-559-LINK (v)  423-559-5145 (f)
http://www.wingnet.net