Syba Firewire not seeing camera

[blink999]

I have a 'hack (GA-B75M-D3P, Core i5-3570K, 8GB Corsair RAM, built-in HD4000 graphics, etc, no other cards installed, built-in audio/Ethernet/USB, etc.) running 10.9.4. Works perfectly. I added a Syba PEX30016 PCIe Firewire card (TI chipset), that at least one Amazon reviewer identified as working with a Hackintosh. OS X seems to see it; under FireWire in System Information, I get: "Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec" and in dmesg I see:

$ sudo dmesg | grep -i firewire
FireWire runtime power conservation disabled. (3)
FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 823f PCI now active, GUID 7856341278563412; max speed s800.

But when I plug in my FireWire device (a Sony DCR-TRV460 "Digital8" camcorder from 2004), nothing sees it, not even iMovie HD 6.0.3.

The same camera, same cable, same iMovie version, works perfectly with the camera when connected to a circa-2006 MacBook with built-in FireWire (running 10.5.11), so it's not a problem with the camera, cable, or application software.

When the camera is connected to the FireWire 400 port, I get messages like this one repeating in dmesg:

FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 823f PCI: no valid selfIDs for more than 3 minutes after bus reset.

lspci -nn sees the card as:

[FONT=Menlo]02:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Texas Instruments XIO2213A PCI Express to PCI Bridge [104c:823e] (rev 01)[/FONT]
[FONT=Menlo]03:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Texas Instruments XIO2213A 1394b OHCI with 3-Port PHY [104c:823f] (rev 01)[/FONT]

Not sure what else to do, to troubleshoot...

 

[blink999]

No one has any troubleshooting suggestions? Update, I found an old Firewire hard drive and hooked it up, and that worked fine (automatically mounts, etc). So it appears to be just the camera (which works, with the same cable, with the built-in Firewire on an ancient MacBook...)

 

[blink999]

Okay, this is bizarre, but, with the camcorder hooked up through the Maxtor Firewire external hard drive (daisy-chained), QuickTime Pro 7 sees the camera and captures footage fine. Weird. Not ideal (would have preferred to plug the camera directly into the Firewire port on the back of the 'hack), but, good enough for this use case.