Willard said:
I suspect you are right, but the PC is a notebook..
Get a copy of Everest.
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181
If you look in Devices

CI Devices, you should see any chips on the
bus in the laptop. I would expect to find the following, which would
all be part of an O2micro chip. The O2micro chip is primarily added
to support the Cardbus slot (your expansion slot), but also includes
some other functions. This is my best guess as to what you'd see.
VEN_1217&DEV_00F7 OHCI IEEE 1394 (1217 = O2Micro)
VEN_1217&DEV_7120 Integrated MMC/SD
VEN_1217&DEV_7130 Integrated MS/xD
VEN_1217&DEV_7134 CardBus
The Everest display will show "Device ID" and values like "1217-00F7".
So the format of the information is slightly compacted.
The Dell driver for O2micro, is this one. The driver supports the lower
three items, but does not include Firewire. And that is because Firewire
is supposed to be covered by the OS itself.
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/chipset/R197155.exe
According to this hardware report, 1394.inf (which will be on your C drive,
in the INF folder) is supposed to cover the Firewire. I looked in my copy
of that file (for SP3), and 1217-00F7 is not included. I take it, that
they're using a "generic" mechanism of some sort (like the BIOS passing
some kind of plug and play info) to get it detected. Look for
PCI\VEN_1217&DEV_00F7 on this page, and see if your results are similar.
http://www.hardware.no/tester/laptop/dell/d820/report.htm
Seeing the presence of the device, may mean the logic block is still
functional. But it doesn't explain why the Device Manager is not
showing it.
You might also look in the setupapi.log file, for any messages related to
trying to enumerate and install that device. There is likely more than
one file with that name in it, as when the file gets too big, Windows
starts a new one.
Paul