My 4800 keeps losing communication with my Mac

[TorchMusic]

This is something is starting to concern me. If I do some work in the studio, leave it alone for a while and then go back to work on a project. Often times, My DM 4800 will not respond to my computer (play audio files, DAW, Maschine, etc). I have to restart the computer to get the party started again. Is this normal?

 

[Gravity Jim]

No, not normal (obviously). The only time my Mac has ever lost the connection to the FireWire card while in use was when I hot-plugged an external FW hard drive.

Do you have your computer set to go to sleep after a certain interval?

 

[TorchMusic]

That's what I'm thinking. My mac pro does go to sleep. I believe when it sleeps it may be losing connection (because its' asleep) and does not restore the connection when it wakes up.

 

[waterstrum]

A quick way to restore communications is to just unplug and replug the FW plug.
My Mac based system is very stable with the DM now, but in the past, when I had problems, this was my quick solution.
Hope this helps.

 

[Arjan P]

The best solution and good common practice for all studio computers, is to disable all energy saving features - and shut the whole shebang down when work is done.

 

[waterstrum]

That's a really bad solution, you should never hotplug firewire.
Always turn off either your mac or dm before conmect/disconnect. It's a real possibility that you burn either the fw port on your dm or mac if you don't. I learned this the hard way.

The firewire spec says that hot plugging is O.K.
I've done it hundreds of times in my set up and never had a problem.

That being said....
Don't do it if you have a set up that is not up to current specs.
Or... just don't do it.

 

[TorchMusic]

The best solution and good common practice for all studio computers, is to disable all energy saving features - and shut the whole shebang down when work is done.

Sounds good. I did exactly that.

 

[Gravity Jim]

That's a really bad solution, you should never hotplug firewire.
Always turn off either your mac or dm before conmect/disconnect. It's a real possibility that you burn either the fw port on your dm or mac if you don't. I learned this the hard way.

Right. That's why they call FireWire "hot swappable."

I wasn't unplugging the DM, but plugging a WD external hard drive into an open FW port. Both my Mac and the WD drive comply with the IEEE1394 standard and are in no danger when hot swapping a drive. (If you burned out a port unplugging a drive, I'd guess you either unplugged it while it was transferring data or were using a non-compliant PC).

My point wasn't that physical damage was done, but that it some how confused the OS as to what was on the FireWire ports.

 

[TorchMusic]

I'm not sure they really meant hot swappable for devices like the DM 4800 I believe they just meant hard drives. all the audio interfaces I have had made it clear not to disconnect or connect them to the computer while the computer is on or while they are on.

 

[waterstrum]

Once again, I can tell you that I have done this many times with no problem.
It always reset the communications between the DM and the Mac.
FWIW, I was pulling the plug on the card, not the computer.

That being said... Don't try this at home, it could fry your card or your computer.

In my case, I would not hesitate to re-plug if I was in the middle of a session and needed to re-establish the link.