[MacDV] FireWire Hub?

[ShirleyK]

It must be a possibility and not just a chain. I once tried to hook up 
2 iPods to that powered hub and got some of the strangest behavior I've 
ever seen. I don't remember the details now, but I could not see both 
iPods and they seemed to be mixed up with each other's names. In fact, 
that might have been the beginning of my FireWire problems on the iMac.

I asked Chris Breen why I couldn't have two iPods connected at the same 
time and he chose to put that question in his column. The answer was 
that it was OK to do it if both were connected either to the ports on 
the computer directly or to a powered hub. I was using this same IOGear 
powered hub and may have had one or two other devices on it. Evidently 
it did not supply enough power to handle 2 iPods. Currently it's 
handling an old 160 GB Maxtor drive and a compact flash card reader.

Now here is something really strange to me. So far we've been talking 
about FW 400 devices. But I have two external LaCie 800 drives. One is 
connected to the FW 800 port and the second drive is connected to the 
first drive. I was trying to update the firmware on both and could not 
until I disconnected the FW hub. In fact LaCie told me to not even have 
another empty FW cable connected to the computer.

Because I don't like the noise the larger drive makes, I had been 
powering it off (by pulling the plug from the UPS) after shutdown. I 
discovered that I can just disconnect the FW 400 hub and that powers 
off both external drives. Would you believe that the FW 400 hub would 
power off two other drives connected to a different FW 800 port? Seems 
like voodoo to me.

Shirley


On Nov 21, 2004, at 9:41 AM, revDAVE wrote:
>
>
> So - may I gather that you think that too many thing in the FW chain -
> possibly robbing power might be the problem