Firewire issue may be solved...

Last night Jes was having trouble getting ASH to connect to the DV deck. After a bit of cable checking, he found that the external power from the Apple display to the CPU was not connected. In addition to the power supply connecting to the 120v outlet, the display has a USB input cable that must connect to the back of the tower in order for it to supply external power to 1394 devices. I did not know this! Hopefully this will help us troubleshoot in the future.

So remember: if the display's Firewire port doesn't connect, it's not broken - it simply isn't powered up.

-DAL