New Macbook shutting down when plugging in firewiresoundcard

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:37 am

Hi. I just got myself my first mac. Its a macbook. i bought it in february so its the third generation. i've maxed out the ram(4gb) and it works great.

Except every fucking time i plug in my presonus firebox soundcard in the firewire the thing says it got kernel error and needs to reboot. when i have rebooted everything works fine and the soundcard to but if i plug it out and inn again the same thing happens!

can anyone help me?

catch22 · Post by **catch22** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:00 am

Same thing on my macbook with the firebox. Seems lots of people are having trouble.

Just make sure the power supply is on for the firebox before you boot up the mac.

http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.p ... ht=leopard

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:01 am

two things:

-make sure you have the latest drivers for your card.

- make sure that they installed the ram properly.

my story:
I had my macbook shutting down randomly with kernelpanic when I was moving it, and after two weeks of having it at techservice they brought it back, telling me that everything would be OK, and charged me 30 euros for making a system update. Still I had some random-shutdowns.

Brought it to another mac-techie, and he found after ten minutes that the additional ram hadn't been plugged in properly, which can lead to those shutdowns.

When you plug or unplug the firewireport you might give a little push to the macbook that might lead to a similar crash.

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:18 am

i will check this out in the weekend. anyone else got some more tips? cos this is really important for me 'cos i'm gonna use it live and i can't reboot live..

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:22 am

not playing live myself but a general rule seems to be: always have a b solution. Like if the laptop crashes you smack in an ipod or cd player until it gets back on.

or two backups if the first fail

---

also check the ram using some sort of memory scanning device. I had the same, and it would crash everytime a certain address of the memory (or range) would be written to (eg mostly when i started live - that use a lot memory). I switched the bad set and have not had a single blue screen since (windows vista and xp)

well just saying there are many causes.

but if other people have the same trouble with the presonus, thats more than likely to be the cause.

mekon · Post by **mekon** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:25 am

Not really a good idea to hot plug a firewire soundcard
It will cause errors

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:28 am

then macs suck

i hotplogged a new interface that was not installed or anything yesterday on windows xp - worked like a charm

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:42 am

mekon wrote:Not really a good idea to hot plug a firewire soundcard
It will cause errors

so what do you recomend? turning on and off my mac completley everytime i want to use my soundcard? i thought one thing with the macs where you could run them like forever and not reboot.. ?

flogistox · Post by **flogistox** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:27 am

I have the same problem (kernel error) with the M-audio Fw 410. Not only when I hot plug the firewire cable (which is explicitly adviced not to), but even when I turn on the macbook forgetting to turn on the sound card as well (that I can do without any problem on my iMac G5)

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:50 am

flogistox wrote:I have the same problem (kernel error) with the M-audio Fw 410. Not only when I hot plug the firewire cable (which is explicitly adviced not to), but even when I turn on the macbook forgetting to turn on the sound card as well (that I can do without any problem on my iMac G5)

sounds strange that it gets kernel error when the card is not turned on! also i have gotten the kernal error sometimes trying to see dvd in frontrow...

Kobalt · Post by **Kobalt** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:52 am

catch22 wrote:Just make sure the power supply is on for the firebox before you boot up the mac.

Indeed. I read somewhere that a macbook is not able to buspower the firebox (not enough power in the firewire port). so you should try with an external power supply.
I don't have any problem hotplugging/unpluggin/rehotpugging my firebox (buspowered) on my Imac running live and all. no bug at all.

ernene · Post by **ernene** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:05 pm

kristoffer1989 wrote:
mekon wrote:Not really a good idea to hot plug a firewire soundcard
It will cause errors
so what do you recomend? turning on and off my mac completley everytime i want to use my soundcard? i thought one thing with the macs where you could run them like forever and not reboot.. ?

I do not know what presonus says about it, but M-Audio and RME say clearly on their manuals NOT to HOT PLUG, NEVER, the firewire audio interface!!!!!!
So, even if it's a bit of a pain in the a**s, did you tried to do it for a couple of days, just to be sure it's not that!
and of course, update everything! and repair permissions before and after updating.

Good luck!

edit: I'm talking about not self-powered interfaces! since I hate to have more things attached to ACC I use FW interfaces bus-powered by the mac....

G.

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:28 pm

Kobalt wrote:
catch22 wrote:Just make sure the power supply is on for the firebox before you boot up the mac.
Indeed. I read somewhere that a macbook is not able to buspower the firebox (not enough power in the firewire port). so you should try with an external power supply.
I don't have any problem hotplugging/unpluggin/rehotpugging my firebox (buspowered) on my Imac running live and all. no bug at all.

ok if this is the solution i would be REALLY happy!! i just can't wait to test it. im gonna test it today even though i don't home before 23.30

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:28 pm

I have had no issues pluggin in and out with my motu firewire card on the macbook. I turn the card off first, though.

kristoffer1989 · Post by **kristoffer1989** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:35 pm

i found this in the presonus faq:

The Macbook Pro's firewire bus has a protection circuit built-in that prevents too much power being initially drawn by any device connected to it. Because of this, the Firebox's included power adaptor will need to connected and plugged in prior to booting up your Macbook. Once both the Firebox and the Macbook are powered up, you can disconnect the Firebox's power adaptor and it can be powered from the firewire bus.'

looks promising!