I just received my 4 firewire 800 readers today and I can't get them to work? they light up blue and I put my card in but it doesn't pop up on my mac G5. I am getting UDMA 4gb Lexar 300x cf cards tomorrow so I will test it with those to see if that fixes the problem.

Basically when I insert my Ridata 150x 4gb cf cards, nothing happens. On my mac it doesn't show up as a drive or anything. I am on an old G5 with dual 2.5 ghz processors, 8gb ram, running Leopard. I tried with all 4 drives daisy chained and tried one individually, but nothing. I have a basic cf card reader that when I plug in it pops up a drive called eos digital (the cf card) but the Lexar firewire readers don't do anything? Any ideas? I don't imagine it would be imcompatible with the cards??

HELP

Hello friend! Up late too! School starts here tomorrow. I have albums to design.

Anyway, I wanted to buy one of those, but I went on vacation instead. Did I miss the rebate?

Here is a thread about a cable adapter. Something about 8 pin or 9 pin.

http://www.opensourcephoto.net/forum/index...hl=Lexar+FW+800


Tell us if it works out.

Hmmm...no idea. Mine just pop up. Make sure you shove the cards all the way in. The slots can be stiff for quite a while after you get them new. They should be flush with the edges of the opening.

Yeah Ryan, I pushed it in all the way flush, the solid blue light starts to blink as if it is starting to read it, but doesn't pop up on the mac and the blue light just goes solid again. Perhaps I will have to look into one of those adapters?

dustin, return them and get the sandisk UDMA (FW400/800) readers. they rock and work just perfectly!

either way, i wonder what the problem is... let us know what you figure out.

Trevor,

I just bought all new 300x Lexar UDMA cards though to go with the new readers, lol, will they still transfer on the Sandisk FW800 readers?

D

I betcha it's the cards. Any change with them?

Do you have your finder set up to show external disks on the desktop? They blink while they are aquiring and then solid once ready.

I do have finder set up to show external's on the desktop, but they aren't showing up there with the card readers and it's not showing up in the finder window either. My other cheap memory card usb reader shows up both on the desktop and finder window when I insert a memory card. I tried restarting the computer too, but no luck.



Ryan,

I just received my lexar 300x udma 4gb cf cards in the mail 10 minutes ago, so I fired some test shots and inserted to find the same results, nothing is happening Do you think maybe my firewire port is busted? What a PITA, I am so dissappointed, I really wanted this to work out.

Dustin

Try just one reader at a time. Then check to make sure that your firewire 800 port is working with another hd or something else. IF that fails, see if they work on someone else's machine..or just return them and get new ones....or maybe try apple care to see if your 800 ports are fried. I've never heard of them doing this but anything is possible.

Oddly, this happened to me, too. I write "oddly" because I was using the USB version -- the one that takes SD cards, too. First, it didn't come with a cable. It worked fine for a couple times, then stopped. It would glow blue when I put a card in, but wouldn't mount.

Disk Utility couldn't see it. System profiler did see it and identified it correctly, but it didn't matter if a card was in or not. If I took the card out, I didn't get the warning message about removing disks correctly, so I really don't think the computer knew it was there.

I ended up returning it, of course, and asked for a replacement. We'll see if the new one works. I hadn't sent in the rebate, yet, which made the return a little easier.

The kind of cards you use shouldn't matter. I was using various cards, Lexar UDMA, Extreme III, Lexar 133, Ultra II, even some old Lexar 40x and 80x cards -- none of them would mount.

Very strange.

Card readers don't need to be formatted do they? Could that be it?

Nope, they're just dumb hardware...plug and play. I suspect it's with the firewire port or the readers themselves...

Yep I use those cards too... No problems at all

You can check check whether things are connected properly through the System Profiler.
Plug in the card reader and push the CF card in.

Click on the Apple symbol in the top left corner and select "About This Mac "
Then click on "More Info"
In the left hand window pain make sure the "Hardware" section is listing all the components by clicking on the little triangle.

Click on "Firewire"
This will then show what is connected (if at all) and the speed it is connected at.

I bet anything that it's a card issue. I haven't heard of RiData. Does anyone else use this particular brand and model of card with the Lexar Reader?

I am certain that if you bought all of these readers and tried with the Lexar or Sandisk cards that it is either a hardware problem with your Firewire 800 Port or with your software/drivers. Have you tried repairing your permissions? Leave the Readers plugged in with cards in and let the system run a permissions repair.

Havw you ever you used the 800 port for anything? I would consider using another Firewire 800 Device (borrow a hard drive from a friend or buy something at a store and return it after testing) and that should narrow down the problem.

I have Ridata cards. They work great. No problems. I think they are big in Australia. Each hemisphere has its own favorite cards. I have Kingston, Ridata, PQI, Sandisk, no problems ever.


I think it is the port. 4 card readers can't be defective. Go to the Apple store and get it checked. Take Tiffany and the kids. They can shop and play in the fountain today after school.

Any update on this?

Not yet, I believe maybe the firewire port may be bad but don't have another fw800 device to test out. So I am hauling my big G5 tower to the apple store today to have them fiddle with it, I wouldn't think 4 card readers could be bad. Makes me wonder though because they do power up via the port because the blue light turns on and blinks then goes solid, so the FW800 port must be doing something, it's just not reading the cards or showing up anywhere in the system.

I'll let you know what Apple says.

I had the same problem when I got mine. The diagram in the manuals showed a criss-cross pattern for connecting the readers together, however they weren't working. I tried the cables in a stacked pattern verses criss-cross and they started working fine. Maybe try that?

Jebb

You did check the FW ports in the back, right? Not just the front one. I suspect there's a different issue going on. It just seems weird that it's not working on your Mac Pro and the USB one didn't work on my Mac Pro. Or the iMac. Or the iBook. Yet the System Profiler recognized and described it perfectly.

works fine on vista 64 bit...

Jebb,

Sorry I missed your call earlier I went to update bejeweled 2 on my iphone this morning while waiting for a client, and it bricked my iphone and resetting wouldn't fixed it, so for ALL DAY today, my iphone was displaying the lovely apple logo and I had no phone access. I just restored it and now it won't sync any of my data and wants to restore again everytime I plug it in, lol. I am so frustrated with things going wrong right now my veins are popping out.

So yeah, I still don't know what the hell is going on. I took it to the apple store today and they took it in the back where I couldn't see and he came out and said the firewire800 port works just fine and it popped up wedding pictures, and I said how as I didn't believe him, lol, so he brought out his cinema display and just as I thought, he couldn't get them to pull up again. He pulled out a fw800 hard drive they use for testing and that pulled up just fine on my computer. He plugged in my lexar fw readers to their demo laptop and they popped up just fine and worked perfectly. So we tried different cables on my mac all which resulted in nothing. So still back to square one.

He says I probably need a new firewire port which doesn't make sense to me because it powers the readers and it worked on their hard drive just fine, it's just these darn readers that weren't working.

As a last resort, he put an 800/400 fw converter cable on and they work just fine through my 400 fw ports and finally popped up, so I bought that cable just happy that I could at least transfer 4 cards at a time. Until I got home and did a test run transferring 4 cards at the same time and it came up with so many errors and stopped after only transferring 150 of 1766 images. So that won't work either. I Fear I might have to buy a new logic board/fw800 port This is SOOOO frustrating, this and my iPhone sitting here restoring in an infinite loop. All during the busiest time of the season. GRRRR, sorry, just needed to vent.

Anyways Jebb, I will try to stack the chords instead of criss crossing tomorrow and let you know if it works Stay posted tomorrow night after I get home from shooting a wedding.

D

No problem Big D,
Vent away...

Do any of the readers work individually?
Sounds like the new port is going to be a good idea no matter what. Sorry about this. Best that you find out now though, right?

Best of luck with the iPhone.

Maybe this is why those readers were on sale.

I bought two and mine work fine.

Dustin,
Any update on this? Did you get it sorted out?

I took my G5 into the apple store and they took it into the back room to hook it up to a display and test it. He brought it out a couple minutes later and said the readers work just fine and asked me if the card had wedding photos on it and I said yes, so he apparently got it to work, so I asked him to show me on the front counter display, so he hooked it up out there and this time it didn't work, lol, just as it never had for me. So we tried all 4 individually and tried different wires. We plugged the Lexar readers into their macbook laptops and it read just fine, back into the G5 and nothing, so he took a FW800 external drive and tested that on my port, and it popped up and worked fine, so tried the Lexar readers again and nothing.

So he said I most likely have a bad FW800 port which is really weird because his external FW800 drive worked fine on the G5. So he did one final test and got a FW 800 to 400 adapter and plugged in all 4 readers to the FW400 port and the readers showed up and worked as they should have been. So I bought the cable and am running all 4 through a FW400 port. It isn't any faster than going USB 2.0, but at least I am able to drop 4 cards at a time, which is at least an improvement.

To get the FW800 port fixed, it's gonna be $700-$800 because it's part of the logic board or something like that, so I figure I'll just stick with the slower speeds but multiple cards option for now

Dude, just buy a FW800 internal expansion card from OWC (http://www.macsales.com)

You can give them a call and let them know what you need and for what computer and they'll happily help you out. They're great guys, I've worked with them a LOT on lots of custom mac stuff that I've done for people, so I know they'll give you good service. Plus I think the card will run you about $150-200 max. Probably less.

Good luck man!