I made few tests with 4 different hard drives.
Onboard firewire seems to work but it seems unstable so I ordered a couple of FW cards to add up to my setup. The firse one is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/LaCie-FW-800-Ca ... f_sc_p_t_4
and the second one is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PCI-FIREWIRE-40 ... f=pd_ybh_5
both with Texs Instrument chip.
They seems to work OOB.
The general FW behaviour is quite weird.
An hd is recognised on each FW400 port (also the 4pin) but when I eject the hd and plug it on a different one it can work but probably won't mount and I have to restart the system.
A second hd may be recognised when plugged itself. If the first one is already plugged it will be ejected with the "hard drive not properly unmounted" error message.
The third is not recognised at all with the FW400 port.
The fouth (that has fw800 ports) is recognised but it will behave like the first fw400 even when swapping with eSata ports.
At the moment I'm trying to erase the second and the third, just to see if the system need to install its own drivers to disks to have them working.
But.
I suppose is a hack issue.
Does anyone know if we can improve the FW drivers?
