More firewire probs.
 

Due to an Apple induced cracked macbook top, I now have an Imac. Better graphics, firewire 800, more ram, more everything. But, guess what. Still have the firewire Canon XH-A1 problem.

So the Apple guy says don't daisy chain the camera to the back of the external firewire hard drive they recommend for the scratch disk.

I reset the NVRAM and could see the Canon again.

Bought a firewire 800 external drive, that works. But, when the camera is plugged into the firewire 400 port and the fw 800 drive is into the 800 port, again Leopard won't see the camera.

I just got the camera back from Canon, they replaced the lcd due to dead pixels. Only 8 hours on the drum.

I'm seeing two workarounds, both a pain in the ass.

One, download hdv or dv to the internal hard drive, with no other firewire device connected. Then remove the camera and connect a hard drive and transfer the data.

Two, try using a 4 wire firewire cable and also connect a usb cable for more power to the bus. Most stuff to buy.

But, so far I removed the hard drives (2 do work fine at the same time, plugged into separate ports) and reset the nvram and osx Leopard still won't see my camcorder.

This is really not acceptable Apple. You promote yourself as being video friendly but require the external scratch disk and your firewire implementation sucks. This has been going on for a long time and you can't get it right. I don't have a problem with my XP machines. I'm certainly not the only person with this problem.

Also the new 20" I-mac lcd is substandard, and changes color as I move my head.

BAD BAD BAD BAD APPLE

Hi Larry,

in february I bought a Macbook pro and had the same problem. I googled around for a while and the cure I found was so simple I couldn't believe it:

"You can reset your Firewire port by following this procedure:

* shut down and disconnect all external drives and peripherals ; make sure nothing is connected to the FireWire ports
* use Apple Disk Utility to repair permissions on your internal boot drive
* shut down and disconnect the AC power from the computer as well as the drives; if laptop, also remove battery
* let sit unpowered and unconnected for 15 minutes
* reconnect AC power to only the computer (battery too if laptop)
* restart computer
* verify that FireWire ports are visible within Apple System Profiler
* reconnect FireWire device (only one); refresh window within Apple System Profiler to rescan the FireWire bus; confirm that device is visible
* confirm drive is OK by using Apple Disk Utility and apply First Aid
* repeat for other devices, one at a time"

You've probably already tried, but it worked for me and for some others.