Firewire 2024: Today's Macs and Sequoia?

[Phil O]

I have the appropriate adapters and I'm going to try my old firewire Appogee Rosetta on my M1 Mac Mini.

So I tried this and had mixed results. My MOTU 828 works fine. The Apogee shows up in the system report as a firewire device, but does not show up in Audio MIDI setup or in DP. I'm guessing that the 828 uses MOTU drivers but the Apogee relies on Apple drivers which are not present. Am I wrong on this? Suggestions?

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[mikehalloran]

Here’s the current list of Apogee’s FW drivers:

https://apogeedigital.com/download-fil ... 0gMIRseW6K

The Rosetta product line shows up on their Obsolete page:

https://apogeedigital.com/legacy-and-obsolete-products/

I have no idea what modern drivers work—if any. Perhaps a user group like this one will know.

Otherwise, they appear to have a trade-in program:
https://share.hsforms.com/1O6srtfOmSTWZoSOhuABITgdisw8

[Phil O]

The Rosetta 800 never had Apogee drivers. It worked off of Apple core audio.

[mikehalloran]

The Rosetta 800 never had Apogee drivers. It worked off of Apple core audio.

Sounds promising. Perhaps there’s a user group that can get you up and running.

Core Audio has changed over the years. A friend of mine still does projects for his church on a G5. I loaned him a number of modern Core Audio interfaces a few years ago — none of them worked. Mackie phone support got involved and confirmed what we’d already learned.

Hmmm… wonder would my friend be interested in my 828mkII FW? I bought that in 2007 and used it with my G5 till I replaced it with my 2010 iMac.

[Phil O]

So I read in a discussion that firewire audio support has been removed from the .kext but cameras, scanners, etc. still work. I don't know if this is true, but it would explain what I'm seeing.
But why would they do that?

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[Michael Canavan]

Lots of great knowledge in this thread. It should be pointed out that you will likely need a 400 to 800 adaptor, and 800 to TB2 adaptor, and a TB2 to TB3 adaptor. You can find cords that adapt 400 to 800, and my solution is an OWC TB2 Dock which you can find on ebay for around $100. You will still need a TB2 to TB3 adaptor, but you get 13 other ports along with your FW back. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fsrp=1 ... _dcat=3709

[mikehalloran]

So I read in a discussion that firewire audio support has been removed from the .kext but cameras, scanners, etc. still work. I don't know if this is true, but it would explain what I'm seeing.
But why would they do that?

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

It's not true. If it was, then our MOTU FireWire devices would no longer work, either. My screen shot showed my 828mkII FW working just fine over Sequoia 15.1.1.

Here is a FindAnyFile screen shot from just a few minutes ago. The November 22 modification date is found in both the Sequoia 15.2 and Sonoma 14.7.2 builds of the macOS.

[Phil O]

Thanks so much for that, Mike. I did a search for IOFireWireFamily.kext and couldn't find it anywhere. Then I updated to OS 15.2 and it appeared in System>Library>Extensions. A quick browse of Time Machine showed that it was not there prior to the 15.2 update. When I get a chance I'm going to try my Apogee unit again.

Thanks again, Mike. You have helped me out more times than I can remember.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[Phil O]

Well I was really optimistic, but that didn't work. What I don't get is that the Apogee shows up in the system report as a firewire device but doesn't show up in Audio MIDI Setup. I'm guessing there's still some Core Audio component missing for it to work. Don't know. It seems like it's recognized as a firewire device but not an audio device.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[dgatwood]

That said, Sequoia does still have the FireWire family kext built in...

Does that mean that devices that used Apple's firewire drivers will still work? I thought Apple abandoned firewire a couple of OS's ago.

Apple removed their FireWire audio driver back in Ventura (macOS 13). That's entirely unrelated to the rest of the FireWire stack,, which is still around and working.

It is possible to edit the kext plist a bit and make it load on later OS versions, and some folks have reported success at making devices keep working in that way on Ventura. It may or may not be workable on later versions because of unrelated I/O Kit changes.

Sadly, I can't find the source code for AppleFWAudio, or else it would be pretty easy to keep it working indefinitely as long as Apple doesn't completely drop the ability to load kexts or drop support for PCI busses. It would be nice if they would open source it.

If we had access to the source code, it would also at least theoretically be possible to port it to DriverKit, though you'd have to start by implementing a FireWire controller driver on DriverKit and implementing a custom plugin interface for user-space FireWire device drivers — doable, but nontrivial.

[Phil O]

Thanks,

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[mikehalloran]

I poked around on some of my developer boards and found this.

https://forums.developer.apple.com/for ... ead/721151

No longer having any FW over Core Audio hardware, I will not be testing this., of course.

I was able to keep my JL Cooper hardware going long after it was depreciated in macOS 10.4 Tiger through similar tactics. Eventually it became no longer possible and it went to e-waste. .

MOTU drivers still work (for now?) so, taking my cue from Shakespeare, I will ”Exit, pursued by a bear.”.

[patthedog]

Confirming, my Firewire-only Ultralite is working great under Sequoia. Bus powered too. Using the dongles and instructions linked to by @mikehalloran

One thing I wonder about... is it okay to restore the standard macOS security option after getting up and running?

[mikehalloran]

Confirming, my Firewire-only Ultralite is working great under Sequoia. Bus powered too. Using the dongles and instructions linked to by @mikehalloran

One thing I wonder about... is it okay to restore the standard macOS security option after getting up and running?

Probably not. This is required for all third party (i.e. non-Apple) extensions in recent macOS.

It's easy enough to test by re-enabling full Security and seeing if your unit still works. Feel free to try it and report back. There is no need to to let me have all the fun.

[patthedog]

Yes, that appears to be the case. After re-enabling full security the MOTU was no longer recognised. Then when security was disabled again, it was necessary to reinstall the MOTU driver.

I notice both the TB and FW adapters become quite warm. I haven't been able to find any stats for the Ultralite's power consumption but imagine it must be quite high. Unlike USB devices, macOS System Report doesn't appear to list the current draw for Thunderbolt devices.