Firewire network cable unplugged?

[kleinebre]

Hi,

Recently I've installed a 1394 pci firewire card in one
PC to set up a pc-to-pc network. The other computer has
firewire on the motherboard.

Installation went flawless: I've assigned both PCs a
fixed IP address: 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2,
respectively, with netmask 255.255.255.0 and no gateway.
Both computers can see each other (via ping and
network neighborhood) and network status indicates a
400 megabit/second connection. Nice!

However, after a few minutes the connection drops with
the message 'a network cable is unplugged'. Any idea
what could possibly be causing this, and what can be
done to fix it?

Additional info:
- As it happens, on-board ethernet is disabled in the
BIOS for both motherboards, so XP is not complaining
about ethernet.
- The firewire cable itself is heavy industrial quality.
- After rebooting, things work again for a while.
- When copying files from one computer to the other,
I've seen at least one delayed write failure. However
no external hard disks are involved.

Best regards,
Marc Brevoort

 

[Malke]

Hi,

Recently I've installed a 1394 pci firewire card in one
PC to set up a pc-to-pc network. The other computer has
firewire on the motherboard.

Installation went flawless: I've assigned both PCs a
fixed IP address: 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2,
respectively, with netmask 255.255.255.0 and no gateway.
Both computers can see each other (via ping and
network neighborhood) and network status indicates a
400 megabit/second connection. Nice!

However, after a few minutes the connection drops with
the message 'a network cable is unplugged'. Any idea
what could possibly be causing this, and what can be
done to fix it?

Additional info:
- As it happens, on-board ethernet is disabled in the
BIOS for both motherboards, so XP is not complaining
about ethernet.
- The firewire cable itself is heavy industrial quality.
- After rebooting, things work again for a while.
- When copying files from one computer to the other,
I've seen at least one delayed write failure. However
no external hard disks are involved.

Best regards,
Marc Brevoort

I am not a firewire expert, but I would check that power management is
disabled on the firewire adapters. Do that from the device's Properties
in Device Manager. If one of the computers is a laptop, also check the
power management program (usually provided by the laptop mftr.) to see
if it is disabling the firewire card when the machine is running on
battery.

Malke

 

[kleinebre]

I am not a firewire expert, but I would check that power management is
disabled on the firewire adapters. Do that from the device's Properties
in Device Manager. If one of the computers is a laptop, also check the
power management program (usually provided by the laptop mftr.) to see
if it is disabling the firewire card when the machine is running on
battery.

All power management is disabled on both computers (both desktops). A
fresh install of XP solved part of the problem: the connection seems
stable now, *as long as neither computer reboots*. When one machine
reboots, unplugging and re-inserting the cable is almost inevitable.
Unless some workaround exists? Reading the groups I feel it might help
to do a bus reset, can this be forced at bootup?

Best regards,
Marc