Enabling Firewire Z68MX-UD2H-B3

[explodingfruit]

So as many of you already know, the motherboard I'm using (Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3) doesn't have any firewire ports. At first, this was no big deal: the main external drive I use for video editing has an eSata port as well as the two Firewire 800 busses, and I just used the motherboard's built in eSata port. This eSata connection works perfectly, and I figured if I ever needed to connect one of my Firewire/USB drives, I could just daisy-chain them to the first drive.

Here's where the problem happens. When I daisy-chain my bus-powered passport drive to my eSata drive via FW800, it won't even power on. At first I thought the FW800 ports on the eSata drive were broken or that the passport drive was broken, but I was able to connect both to my Macbook Pro, both individually and by daisy-chaining them. Furthermore, I can connect the passport drive to my MBP in order to power it, then connect it to my Hackintosh via USB. This is cumbersome and totally impractical though.

So here's my question: Do any of you know what I need to do to make my Hackintosh recognize Firewire connections on external drives? Is it a simple matter of installing a kext or driver? (and if so, what's a good one to use?) Or do I have to just bite the bullet and install a Firewire PCI card and forget about daisy-chaining?

Thanks for your advice!

 

[Cantamus]

So as many of you already know, the motherboard I'm using (Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3) doesn't have any firewire ports. At first, this was no big deal: the main external drive I use for video editing has an eSata port as well as the two Firewire 800 busses, and I just used the motherboard's built in eSata port. This eSata connection works perfectly, and I figured if I ever needed to connect one of my Firewire/USB drives, I could just daisy-chain them to the first drive.

Here's where the problem happens. When I daisy-chain my bus-powered passport drive to my eSata drive via FW800, it won't even power on. At first I thought the FW800 ports on the eSata drive were broken or that the passport drive was broken, but I was able to connect both to my Macbook Pro, both individually and by daisy-chaining them. Furthermore, I can connect the passport drive to my MBP in order to power it, then connect it to my Hackintosh via USB. This is cumbersome and totally impractical though.

So here's my question: Do any of you know what I need to do to make my Hackintosh recognize Firewire connections on external drives? Is it a simple matter of installing a kext or driver? (and if so, what's a good one to use?) Or do I have to just bite the bullet and install a Firewire PCI card and forget about daisy-chaining?

Thanks for your advice!

I had a similar problem.. (with a similar Hackintosh) I used the DSDT file and Firewire works well but just with some devices...
Doesn't recognize my external hard disk drive (Lacie quadra) and doesn't work well with Apogee interface... with Digidesign003 interface works like a charm... I hope some one could help us...
Thanks

 

[mrhooks]

I just used the motherboard's built in eSata port. This eSata connection works perfectly,

You're lucky. I have the same motherboard, and eSATA does not work well. The connection works, but my CPU load goes up something like 10% per core (I don't remember the details anymore, but I posted about it a while back, it was enough to get me to give up on eSATA).

Here's where the problem happens. When I daisy-chain my bus-powered passport drive to my eSata drive via FW800, it won't even power on.

Are you trying to daisy-chain with two different interfaces? I believe you have to use FW800 all the way through.

I have the Syba FW800/400 PCI card. My external drives work fine with it. I thought it was flaky at first, but I think one of my drives has a bad FW800 port. Luckily it has two ports for daisy-chaining. The only problem I've had with the card is some OHCI weirdness with my Lexar FW800 CF card reader. The card reader shows up as "Unknown Device" in System Information, and it causes a continuous stream of bus resets that get written to kernel.log every few minutes, even when there's no CF card in it. I can still use the reader though, so I just leave it unplugged until I have to use it. Kinda annoying, but not the end of the world. I think it's an issue with the TI chipset, but I could be wrong - maybe it's the card reader.