Hi all

I'm having a big problem with my iMac. It won't recognize my fireface 400 sound card from RME. The weird thing here is that it did work for a couple of years. I just moved into a new studio, and set it all up, and now my iMac won't recognize the fireface. It does "connect" though, since the iMac is actually able to power the card via bus power. I figured that it might be a problem with the signal being too weak, so I tried using the external power cable for the sound card instead. The card worked for something close to 2 minutes, and then went back to the passive state with the host button on. I was able to update the firmware, at some point when the card was recognized, for a day or so. First it didn't work for a couple of hours, then I got it running, updated the firmware, and like a day later it stopped working again. I don't think this is related, but I just want to rule out the obvious update driver/firmware sollution.

I've searched the net pretty thoroughly, and noticed that a bunch of people seem to have problems similar to mine. For most

people resetting the PRAM/NVRAM seems to do the job, and in some cases resetting the SMC (by unplugging the power cable and everything else) works. I've tried both of these 3-4 times, but it hasn't worked.

Other people claim that there is a problem with the chipset installed on a certain generation of imacs around the time I bought mine. It doesn't seem that this is the case with mine however. Consulting the RME forum suggests that my chipset is good enough, and since it worked for a couple of years I find it hard to believe that the computer suddenly realized that the chipset actually couldn't run this specific soundcard.

The soundcard is tested on other computers and works flawless.

So. What do I do. Running to my nearest retailer with a computer that seems to be working just fine in pretty much ALL aspects seems a bit ridiculous, and will certainly be a last measure, and something I will only do if I'm sure that the port is actually damaged in some spacy way.

What i've tried so far:

Resetting PRAM/NVRAM (several times)

Resetting SMC (several times)

Starting up in boot camp (the card isn't recognized here, so it's probably not a OS issue)

Uninstalling all drivers and reinstalling.

Installing older drivers to see if they would work

Updated both the mac software, the fireface firmware and the fireface drivers (currently everything is fully up to date)

Specs:

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:    iMac

  Model Identifier:    iMac9,1

  Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo

  Processor Speed:    2.66 GHz

  Number Of Processors:    1

  Total Number Of Cores:    2

  L2 Cache:    6 MB

  Memory:    4 GB

  Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz

System Version:    Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L30)
  Kernel Version:    Darwin 9.8.0
  Boot Volume:    Macintosh HD
  Boot Mode:    Normal

Please help a brother out!