20070607 its the hardware stupid - plembo/onemoretech GitHub Wiki

title: It’s the Hardware, Stupid! link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/its-the-hardware-stupid/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 693 created: 2007/06/07 23:45:00 created_gmt: 2007/06/07 23:45:00 comment_status: open post_name: its-the-hardware-stupid status: publish post_type: post

It’s the Hardware, Stupid!

Trying to track down the cause of my Firewire problems, I came across this blog post.

The output of dmesg on my machine matched his:

(Note: Output is scrunched to fit withing the ridiculously narrow columns in this stylesheet)

ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry `ip1394'
ohci1394: fw-host0: Get PHY Reg timeout
[0x00000080/0x00000000/100]
ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[18]  MMIO=
ecefe000-ecefe7ff]
Max Packet=[2048]  IR/IT contexts=[11/32]ohci1394: fw-host0:
Get PHY Reg timeout [0×00000080/0×00000000/100] ohci1394: fw-host0:
Get PHY Reg timeout [0×00000080/0×00000000/100]

The result from lsmod was less promising:

ohci1394               37489  0
ieee1394              294809  1 ohci1394

Doing a modprobe on raw1394, dv1394 and ohci1394 garnered this changed result:

dv1394                 22821  0
raw1394                30789  0
ohci1394               37489  1 dv1394
ieee1394              294809  3 dv1394,raw1394,ohci1394

So far so good, I was tracking the author’s experience closely. Running dmesg again, I now got:

ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry `ip1394'
ohci1394: fw-host0: Get PHY Reg timeout
[0x00000080/0x00000000/100]
ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[18]  MMIO=
[ecefe000-ecefe7ff]  Max Packet=[2048]  IR/IT contexts=
[11/32]ohci1394:
fw-host0: Get PHY Reg timeout [0×00000080/0×00000000/100]
ohci1394: fw-host0: Get PHY Reg timeout
[0×00000080/0×00000000/100]
ieee1394: raw1394: /dev/raw1394 device initialized
WARNING: The dv1394 driver is unsupported and will be removed
from Linux soon. Use raw1394 instead.

At this point I knew. It was my hardware. Specifically my IEEE1394 PCI card. It had to be. Over a decade of experience in computers told me that was the answer.

A cheap, $12 card, made in some sweatshop in China, had cost me a week’s worth of late nights.

The moral of the story? Hardware fails. It’s a physical law. As my middle brother used to say, heat is the greatest enemy of electronics — and computers run awful hot compared to other appliances.

I could go down to the local computer shop and get a replacement card, but I already know they’re only going to have the same low cost card that just failed on me. So instead I’m going up on Newegg and order something slightly more expensive made by SIIG (a company whose components went into the first PCs I built for hire back in the late 80’s). Right now, however, I’m going upstairs to power down the machine and remove the faulty card.