# firewire hd

## skunk

hi all,

i've recently bought an iomega 120 hdd and tried to make it work with my dell inspiron laptop through the firewire port.

the drive comes with a 6 pin connector attached to the cable, so i bought also a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter and i've successfully connected it to my laptop 4 pin ieee1394 port.

then i've made a new kernel with ieee1394, ohci1394, sbp2 and sd_mod compiled in.

booting the new kernel doesn't give any strange error messages, but i can't get any new scsi device listed on the devfs, like before i just get my atapi cdrw...

did i miss something?

thank you in advice

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## nightcanton

 *Quote:*   

> <*> IEEE 1394 (FireWire) support (EXPERIMENTAL)                                                x x   
> 
>   x x                                     --- Device Drivers                                                                             x x   
> 
>   x x                                     ---   Texas Instruments PCILynx requires I2C bit-banging                                       x x   
> ...

 

You should just have these in there.  I believe....

Try playing around with it.  Just to see if you can get it working.    If all else fails....enable everything in the Firewire section and if it works....well....dwindle it down from there.

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## skunk

my new iomega firewire drive is still not usable with my inspiron 8100 laptop   :Crying or Very sad: 

after loading ieee1394 ohci1394 and sbp2 modules which gives me the following in dmesg:

```

ohci1394: $Rev: 578 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>

PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 02:0f.2

PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.2

PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 02:0f.0

PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 02:0f.1

ohci1394_0: OHCI-1394 1.0 (PCI): IRQ=[10]  MMIO=[f6ffd800-f6ffdfff]  Max Packet=[2048]

ieee1394: Host added: Node[00:1023]  GUID[484fc00002d2a010]  [Linux OHCI-1394]

scsi0 : IEEE-1394 SBP-2 protocol driver (host: ohci1394)

$Rev: 584 $ James Goodwin <jamesg@filanet.com>

SBP-2 module load options:

- Max speed supported: S400

- Max sectors per I/O supported: 255

- Max outstanding commands supported: 8

- Max outstanding commands per lun supported: 1

- Serialized I/O (debug): no

- Exclusive login: yes

```

i've executed rescan-scsi-bus.sh which returns me the following:

```

Host adapter 0 (sbp2) found.

0 new device(s) found.

0 device(s) removed.

```

but i don't get any new scsi device on my /dev file system...

please help me, the drive was really expensive but i know for certain it would normally works under linux...

thanks

ps.: maybe the problem is caused by the 4-pin to 6-pin adapter that i'm forced to use in order to connect the device to my 4-pin firewire port? i really don't know...

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## watersb

First off, I have found this firewire stuff to be sort of timing dependent on startup; I wrote a script to give the modules a couple of seconds to load and initialize:

```

#!/sbin/runscript

start() {

  ebegin "Starting firewire disks"

  modprobe ieee1394

        einfo "     ieee1294 loaded"

        sleep 1

  modprobe ohci1394

        einfo "    ohci1394 loaded"

        sleep 2

   modprobe sbp2

        einfo "    sbp2 loded"

   eend $?

}

```

Secondly: firewire disks have not worked for me on my Dell Inspiron since kernel 2.4.19

EDIT: problem solved? see post below...

The DMA option for sbp2 never works; the disks are not detected. With sbp2 and DMA disabled on kernels later than 2.4.19, I am able to see the disks for a bit, but after a minute or two the filesystems disappear and I get I/O errors from the kernel. Usually, the kernel does not panic.

I have a 2.4.19 setup that I use as a rescue CD-ROM, but can't use firewire.

I have also tried numerous development kernels. No dice. I/O errors.

The disks work fine with 2.4.19, and work fine with Windows. The disks and enclosures also worked with my Titanium Mac, back when I had one... no joy with recent kernels.Last edited by watersb on Sat Jul 26, 2003 2:52 am; edited 1 time in total

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## skunk

no solutions found, i'd no time (and no will) to wipe my linux partitition for seeing if windoze would detect the drive, so i've sold it  :Wink: 

i think i'll buy a new faster and bigger 2,5" drive with that money...

i've no more firewire devices so i can't tell if it was an hardware issue  :Sad: 

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## watersb

problem solved?

I have had a problem with firewire I/O on newer kernels for months now... I saw this thread and it prompted me to do something. So I read the page at http://www.linux1394.org/sbp2.html

Then I tried this:

```

# modprobe ieee1394

# modprobe ohci1394

# modprobe sbp2 serialize_io=1

```

That last bit -- pass serialize_io=1 as option to the sbp2 module

I have my disks working again (so far!)  in kernel 2.6.0-test1  :Very Happy: 

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## watersb

 *skunk wrote:*   

> maybe the problem is caused by the 4-pin to 6-pin adapter that i'm forced to use in order to connect the device to my 4-pin firewire port? i really don't know...

 

Sorry to hear you had so much trouble, too, Skunk...

I have found that my Dell Inspiron is very sensitive to the tension on my 4-pin <-> 6-pin cable -- that is, the 4-pin connector sucks on Dell laptops. So I am very careful about inserting the cable correctly -- it won't hurt anything, but it won't work if it is twisted or bent too much. Your cabling situation may be different... but that adapter might indeed be causing some trouble.

I have used a Maxstor 160GB external Firewire hard disk on my Dell Inspiron with Gentoo linux for almost a year now. I just had trouble using recent sbp2 driver, but passing the serialize_io option to it seems to have cleared up my problem. I was getting I/O errors. But I can almost always see the disk under the /dev/scsi... area. If you can't then you're not getting as far as I did, and it might be the cable.

Hope you enjoy that new 2.5 disk...   :Confused: 

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## skunk

 *watersb wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Hope you enjoy that new 2.5 disk...  

 

i noticed today that my laptop (insp. 8100) is usb2 capable (82801BA/BAM)

do you have any experience with it? does it works?

the idea is to box the old 2.5" drive and connect it through usb(2/1?) to the laptop...

thank you

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