October 18, 2007
Fixing a broken Behringer FCA202 external firewire audio interface (which breaks on OS 10.4.10 update)
Sean is a singer/songwriter who lives in Cape Town. He has recorded a demo album using Garageband on his white Macbook (Garageband is a surprisingly full-featured program!). Like any good Mac user, he installs the latest updates from Apple – which is good maintenance procedure – until the 10.4.10 update “fixed” his firewire audio driver and promptly broke communication between his Behringer FCA202 external firewire sound card.
Apple say it’s not their fault because the manufacturer hasn’t stuck to its guidelines for writing drivers. Behringer say it’s not their fault because the sound card was working fine before Apple’s update. *sigh*
Luckily, there is a fix available (YMMV). It involves somehow rolling back to OS 10.4.9 – either through your backups (if you have a robust enough process), or by booting off your install cd’s and doing an “Archive and Install options” (then making sure you don’t upgrade past 10.4.9) or – the least painless option – roll back your Firewire audio driver to an earlier version. This involves installing the Firewire SDK 24 for Mac OS X.
Firstly, register at the Apple developer site and then download the Firewire SDK 24 (registration and downloading are free). Mount the dmg by double-clicking on it and then run the FireWireSDK23.pkg file. It’ll ask you for permission to install and will then create a /Developer folder on your hard drive (if it doesn’t already exist).
Then reboot, click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen and click “About this Mac”. Then “More info” and System Profiler will open. Click “Extensions” under “Software” and select AppleFWAudio. The driver version should be 2.0.1 – good enough to run your Behringer FCA202 (or any other external audio device broken by the update).
For a slightly more in-depth talk through, download this pdf from mackie.com
Comments(4)
Roger Saner is a web platform developer (using 
Downloaded the firewire SDK 24 but when i tried to install it, it said there was nothing to install.
Also when you download the firewire SDK 24 dmg & open it the pkg file is called firewire SDK 23!
The downloaded file is “firewiresdk24.dmg” – double click on it to mount it. Once you’ve mounted it then double click on the “FireWireSDK23.pkg” to run it (that’s the installation file you want). And no, I have no idea why version 23 is inside a version 24 downloader!
Hi there, I’ve been struggling with this problem for a while and trudged the net for answers but I still can’t get my macbook to recognise my FCA202.
I can’t get the download packages off the apple site now – only the SDK26 which has been no help.
I bought the macbook second hand so have no discs etc to reboot as it came with a freshened copy of snow leopard already on it.
Do you have any idea how I could get my sound card working on my macbook? Please? I’m desperate now……
I saw a lot of website but I think this one holds something extra in it in it