14mth old mac book pro with firewire issues

hiyah guys can you help me out with an issue with my mac book pro 17inch,

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.28f2




Dec 15 02:16:03

System Profiler[252]: SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.

Dec 15 02:16:37

System Profiler[252]: SPFWR ERROR: FireWire bus may be unstable. Other FireWire devices may be present.


i cant see my hard drives that are connected to either 800 or 400 ports but when i pwr down the laptop the hard drive falls asleep also, i have reformatted the computer and have put clean installs of both leopard and snow leopard on and still nothing, no FW hard drives are present, i have also checked the boxes in sidebar prefs, still nothing, i have gone into the profiler and i says there that i have available

Warning: Unable to list FireWire devices.
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec


this is with a ext hard drive connected to the 400 port...

all of this started when i upgraded to snowleopard but cant get the fw to work properly on either OS....this is driving me nuts, can you guys help, i didnt get the extended warranty because i blew what ever money i had buying this baby, and have loved it ever since, but i need to resolve these issues because i need it for my work as a camera man....


Any advice and help would be very much appreciated....thanks in advance...

Bad cables?

1st, NEVER plug a camera (or other device) into a FW port while it's turned on, you risk blowing out the port. A- plug in camera, B- turn on camera, C- turn on computer. This is the number one cause of blown FW ports.

Most cameras have 4-pin FW connectors on them, thank you Sony for inventing the POS 4-pin FW plug! The 4-pin is obviously 2 pins short of the original standard 6-pin FW400 connector. One of the pins Sony decided we could live without is the grounding pin. Thus, the large amounts of static that build up in our video equipment is a disaster waiting to happen. When the devices are turned off and you connect, the static jumps, travels through metal frames, dissipates. When the devices are turned on, the static jumps, and goes straight to the FW400 port's circuitry. Again, everyone in the video business should write a thank you note to Sony. Thank goodness Panasonic started the trend of putting safe, strong 6-pin connectors on video cameras!

It sounds like the port is simply shorted out, and it's part of the system board, so an expensive repair. Apple Care should be purchased for all Apple hardware you make a living with, because of these types of situations.

If you have a card slot, Wiebe Tech and Other World Computing both have FW cards that would be much cheaper than replacing the system board. I'd get FW800, with FW800 to FW400 cables for your camera. That way, you can use FW800 drives for editing if you need to. Cause FW400 for editing (especially HD) sucks.