Firewire, Hot Swappable or not?

george

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I read much about firewire before deciding to move from USB to firewire
for my ourboard devices
Firewire was supposed to be hot patchable but my M-Audio 410 claims hot
patching thier firewire will damage and render inoperatable both my
ports and ext devices
connections MUST be made or unmade with the computer OFF
Is the hot swappable claim of firewire just ad copy ? what other
firewire devices forbid hot swapping?
thanks
George
 

Danny

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On my mac, if unplug or turn off a Firewire unit I get a message that
something was turned off wrong and there might be damage to something...
If I eject the hard drive like I would a CD the message doesn't come on.
I think all the FW units are a little different.

George wrote:
> I read much about firewire before deciding to move from USB to firewire
> for my ourboard devices
> Firewire was supposed to be hot patchable but my M-Audio 410 claims hot
> patching thier firewire will damage and render inoperatable both my
> ports and ext devices
> connections MUST be made or unmade with the computer OFF
> Is the hot swappable claim of firewire just ad copy ? what other
> firewire devices forbid hot swapping?
> thanks
> George
 
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In article <g.p.gleason-520F49.09312528082004@netnews.worldnet.att.net> g.p.gleason@worldnet.att.net writes:

> I read much about firewire before deciding to move from USB to firewire
> for my ourboard devices
> Firewire was supposed to be hot patchable but my M-Audio 410 claims hot
> patching thier firewire will damage and render inoperatable both my
> ports and ext devices
> connections MUST be made or unmade with the computer OFF

I think it depends on how powering is handled. Data is hot-swappable,
and because they push the technology heavily for disk drives and video
cameras, I suppose those are designed so they can be yanked and
plugged without damage.

Something like an audio interface generally has no compelling need to
be hot-swapped, so maybe they just didn't bother with taking care of
that end of the business in hardware, but dealt with it in software
(the documentation).

I'd trust what the manual for the Firewire M-410 says.

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In article <10j1amfbcv3jd20@corp.supernews.com>, Danny <Keep@Your.com>
wrote:

> On my mac, if unplug or turn off a Firewire unit I get a message that
> something was turned off wrong and there might be damage to something...
> If I eject the hard drive like I would a CD the message doesn't come on.
> I think all the FW units are a little different.

IEEE1394 standard specifies that devices are to be hot pluggeable.
The errror message above says that the computer cannot guarantee that
all changed data has been written to the removeable device before you
unplugged it. This is software only, or data. There is no damage to
hardware.

HTH

Marc

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Danny

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Marc Heusser wrote:


>
> IEEE1394 standard specifies that devices are to be hot pluggeable.
> The errror message above says that the computer cannot guarantee that
> all changed data has been written to the removeable device before you
> unplugged it. This is software only, or data. There is no damage to
> hardware.
>
> HTH
>
> Marc
>

Thanks for that. I thought so but you know I always swallow a rock when
I unplug.
 
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In article <marc.heusser-AD28EE.11443629082004@individual.net>,
marc.heusser@CHEERSheusser.comMERCIALSPAMMERS.invalid says...
> IEEE1394 standard specifies that devices are to be hot pluggeable.
> The errror message above says that the computer cannot guarantee that
> all changed data has been written to the removeable device before you
> unplugged it. This is software only, or data. There is no damage to
> hardware.

Maybe so, but there are apparently some bus-powered Firewire drives that
can damage the Mac's hardware if you hot-plug them, despite the fact
that FireWire was designed for that to work. There are signs everywhere
at Berklee forbidding hot-plugging drives because of that.

--
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Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
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<< I thought so but you know I always swallow a rock when
I unplug. >>

With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash so that the
FireWire bus will not expect it to be there anymore. After that, unplug at
will.

Scott Fraser
 
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In article <20040829132418.26080.00002864@mb-m28.aol.com> scotfraser@aol.com writes:

> With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash so that the
> FireWire bus will not expect it to be there anymore. After that, unplug at
> will.

I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."



--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
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you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
 

george

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In article <znr1093804170k@trad>, mrivers@d-and-d.com (Mike Rivers)
wrote:

> In article <20040829132418.26080.00002864@mb-m28.aol.com> scotfraser@aol.com
> writes:
>
> > With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash so that the
> > FireWire bus will not expect it to be there anymore. After that, unplug at
> > will.
>
> I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
> imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."
>
>
I am going from now on assume that the devices are not hot swappable
regardless of if I am warned or not
Thanks guys
G
 
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Mike rivers expressed:
<<
I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."
>>



The trash can icon turns into an eject icon if you get near it with a drive
icon. If that still worries you, just select the icon of the drive you need to
unmount and select eject from the file menu, or hit "command" E.

Mac
 
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Mike Rivers wrote:
> In article <20040829132418.26080.00002864@mb-m28.aol.com> scotfraser@aol.com writes:
>
>
>>With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash so that the
>>FireWire bus will not expect it to be there anymore. After that, unplug at
>>will.
>
>
> I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
> imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."


That's windoze. Macs aren't that stupid.
 
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On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:54:45 -0600, Danny <Keep@Your.com> wrote:

>On my mac, if unplug or turn off a Firewire unit I get a message that
>something was turned off wrong and there might be damage to something...
>If I eject the hard drive like I would a CD the message doesn't come on.
>I think all the FW units are a little different.

Does it say physical damage might be done? Or that data buffers might
be lost?

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect
 

Danny

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Laurence Payne wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:54:45 -0600, Danny <Keep@Your.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On my mac, if unplug or turn off a Firewire unit I get a message that
>>something was turned off wrong and there might be damage to something...
>>If I eject the hard drive like I would a CD the message doesn't come on.
>>I think all the FW units are a little different.
>
>
> Does it say physical damage might be done? Or that data buffers might
> be lost?
>
> CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
> "Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect
It says data might be lost... but it never is.
 
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On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:54:45 -0600, Danny <Keep@Your.com> wrote:

>On my mac, if unplug or turn off a Firewire unit I get a message that
>something was turned off wrong and there might be damage to something...
>If I eject the hard drive like I would a CD the message doesn't come on.
>I think all the FW units are a little different.

I've not used the external Firewire interfaces on my Mac G4 (yet) but, I just
got an external DVD combo drive for my PC. The manual states, "you can unplug
without fear as long as your not writing to, or reading from the drive." Really
has no pressing to your question, I just wanted to throw in some PC info just
for the heck of it.
 
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<< > With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash so that
the
> FireWire bus will not expect it to be there anymore. After that, unplug at
> will.>

<I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."
>>

It's a Mac thing. The way you unmount a drive or eject a disk is to drag its
icon to the trash. Also, any data item sitting in the trash can be retrieved up
until you intentionally empty the trash. It's a Mac thing.


Scott Fraser
 
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<< I am going from now on assume that the devices are not hot swappable
regardless of if I am warned or not >>

But they are. I do it all the time. Dragging to the trash is just the Mac
method of unmounting a drive.

Scott Fraser
 
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> Maybe so, but there are apparently some bus-powered Firewire drives >that
> can damage the Mac's hardware if you hot-plug them, despite the fact
> that FireWire was designed for that to work. There are signs everywhere
> at Berklee forbidding hot-plugging drives because of that.


There have been lots of documented cases of blown FW controllers on
Mac G4's when "Hot Plugging". Some were probably ESD though.
 
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In article <20040829174239.24956.00001549@mb-m20.aol.com> mackerr@aol.compost writes:

> The trash can icon turns into an eject icon if you get near it with a drive
> icon. If that still worries you, just select the icon of the drive you need to
> unmount and select eject from the file menu, or hit "command" E.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm so non-iconic I probably never would
have figured that out even if I saw it. On my first excursion on a
Mac, we were working with a Dyaxis system and needed more disk space,
so I figured that dragging files to the trash can would delete them,
but the disk was still full no matter how much trash I took out.
Finaly someone told me that I had to EMPTY the trash can before the
files were really deleted. I probably never would have figured that
out either.

Where do people learn this stuff?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
 
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In article <znr1093827829k@trad>, Mike Rivers <mrivers@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>
>In article <20040829174239.24956.00001549@mb-m20.aol.com> mackerr@aol.compost writes:
>
>> The trash can icon turns into an eject icon if you get near it with a drive
>> icon. If that still worries you, just select the icon of the drive you need to
>> unmount and select eject from the file menu, or hit "command" E.
>
>Thanks for the explanation. I'm so non-iconic I probably never would
>have figured that out even if I saw it. On my first excursion on a
>Mac, we were working with a Dyaxis system and needed more disk space,
>so I figured that dragging files to the trash can would delete them,
>but the disk was still full no matter how much trash I took out.
>Finaly someone told me that I had to EMPTY the trash can before the
>files were really deleted. I probably never would have figured that
>out either.

On the Xerox Star, the first commercial machine with a GUI and the place
where Apple got the notion of the trashcan, there is also a Jesus icon which
can be used to resurrect dead files.

I think the whole thing is very counterintuitive, but this isn't really
the place to point out why I hate GUIs so much.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
 
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In article <96mdneuaYJv4Ja_cRVn-gg@omsoft.com> nopsam@nospam.net writes:

> >>With Macs, you have to drag the icon of that drive to the trash

> > I'd sure be afraid to do that (until someone told me otherwise). In my
> > imagination, that means "erase everything on the drive."

> That's windoze. Macs aren't that stupid.

Or maybe Mac users have a better imagination. When I want to get rid
of something physical, I put it in the trash. I have (more often than
I'd like to admit) occasionally rooted through the trash can to
retrieve something, usually a piece of paper. But I can't count on
anything being there or being retrievable. Ever try to read through a
cup full of coffee grounds?


--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo