HELP! iMac 2010 i3 won't recognise firewire equipments

Hi all. This is an urgent help request regarding the firewire connection problem of an iMac purchased in 2010, running iOS 10.6.7, i3 3.06G 21inch model. This model has only one firewire 800 port.

I'm a professional photographer still working on film, and I regularly scan films using my Epson V700 (it's rather fast).

If I connect the scanner via USB, it works; but if I connect it via a 800-400 convert to the iMac's 800 port, there is nothing, it is not recognized.

I tried replacing the 800-400 cable to no avail. It seems that it's the iMac's 800 port that won't do anything.

I did plenty research on the internet and found several similar cases, there are guys who can't connect their HDD, or scanner. But I didn't find the answer.

So please could anyone tell me what to do next (except for calling apple for repair, I'd rather solve this problem myself since the service in France is rather slow).

Can I use the terminal to check the firewire port, or can I force it to install-uninstall drivers?

Same problem persists while I connect the V700 under bootcamp, windows xp won't recognize anything.

Do you guys believe it's a hardware failure?

Thank you very much!!

Three questions - have you verified that the firewire port on the scanner works with another computer? And if you connect the scanner to the Mac, open System Profiler, and check under Firewire, is the scanner at least a visible device? Do you have a different Firewire device, such as a hard drive, you could use to verify the port on the iMac is bad?

same problem

Hi, I have a 2010 imac that is driving me nuts.
In system report, under hardware>firewire, it shows:
FireWire Bus:
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec

Which tells me that the FW bus is reading, but I have tried the two different FW audio devices that I have and neither one pops up in the Audio device manager.

I've tried two different cords, I also went to the local music store and plugged the same mixer with the same cable into their iMac and it popped right up.
Does this mean my FW port is bad?
Many thanks

You're hijacking a four-year-old thread.

Start a new thread and ask, you'll get a lot more help that way.