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Date:      Sat, 20 Mar 2004 13:39:30 -0500
From:      Jesse Guardiani <jesse@wingnet.net>
To:        freebsd-firewire@freebsd.org
Subject:   freebsd 5.2.1-RELEASE, 4 pin laptop firewire ports, and 6 pin firewire hard disk drives
Message-ID:  <c3i354$q38$1@sea.gmane.org>

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Howdy list,

I bought an external 2.5" firewire enclosure back in Dec 2003 to use
with my IBM Thinkpad A30p's 4 pin firewire port. At that time I didn't
know much about firewire, so I totally neglected to notice that the hdd
uses a 6 pin port and is a bus powered device. But my laptop has a 4 pin
port, so I can't directly connect my laptop to my external fw hdd because
the 4 pin port doesn't provide bus power.

So I reluctantly used the USB 1.1 port on my laptop with the external
hdd for a few months. It was painfully slow, but at least I could still
USE the drive to some extent. Eventually I found a decent deal on a 4
port Belkin firewire hub, part number F5U524. It comes with a power
adapter and provides bus power, so I figured this would be an excellent
way to power my hdd AND still use the 4 pin port on my laptop.

However, apparently I'm missunderstanding something about the firewire
specification because even with the belkin hub I can't detect or talk to
my firewire hdd under FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE *OR* Windows XP Professional.
I've tried connecting to the hdd through the hub from three different
laptops:

1.) My Thinkpad with a 4 pin port (FreeBSD & WinXP)
2.) A dell with a 4 pin port (WinXP)
3.) A G4 Powerbook with a 6 pin port (OS X)

*ONLY* the Powerbook can actually detect and talk to my HDD via firewire.
I've tried a 4 pin to 6 pin adapter *AND* a 4 pin to 6 pin cable. No joy.

Anyway, the hub is obviously working because the Powerbook can connect to
the HDD through it. The dell has a known good 4 pin port. My friend has used
it in the past to send DV streams to his camera. But I really don't know
if my Thinkpad's 4 pin port works or not. I've never been able to make it
work. Here's the dmesg:

fwohci0: vendor=1180, dev=522
fwohci0: <1394 Open Host Controller Interface> mem 0xc0201000-0xc02017ff irq 9 at device 0.2 on pci2
fwohci0: OHCI version 1.0 (ROM=0)
fwohci0: No. of Isochronous channel is 4.
fwohci0: EUI64 00:06:1b:02:01:00:24:63
fwohci0: Phy 1394a available S400, 2 ports.
fwohci0: Link S400, max_rec 2048 bytes.
firewire0: <IEEE1394(FireWire) bus> on fwohci0
fwe0: <Ethernet over FireWire> on firewire0
if_fwe0: Fake Ethernet address: 02:06:1b:00:24:63
sbp0: <SBP-2/SCSI over FireWire> on firewire0
fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
fwohci0: BUS reset
fwohci0: node_id=0xc800ffc0, gen=1, CYCLEMASTER mode
firewire0: 1 nodes, maxhop <= 0, cable IRM = 0 (me)
firewire0: bus manager 0 (me)

I've tried 'fwcontrol -r' and numerous other commands, but nothing happens
(well, the bus resets, but my HDD isn't detected). 'fwcontrol -t' always
returns the same result, regardless of whether the hub is attached to my
4 pin port or not:

[13:34]jesse@trevarthan:[~]# fwcontrol -t
crc_len: 3 generation:7 node_count:1 sid_count:1
id link gap_cnt speed delay cIRM power port0 port1 port2 ini more
00    1       8  S400     0    1    0W     -     -         1    0

Can anyone tell me why I can't connect to my HDD through a powered firewire
hub using the 4 pin port on a laptop?

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




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