[Richard Crowley]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in...
I have a MOTU firewire audio interface the the owner says he plugged the
firewire cable into the wrong way round. It now does not communicate with
the computer.

Is it possible/likely to damage the interface circuitry this way?

The larger 6-pin connector is unlikely to suffer from this problem.
However, the tiny 4-pin connector has been known in video
circles to be inserted upside-down by many users.

That almost certainly results in catastrophic damage to the Firewire
port, likely on both ends. Its easy enough to put a new Firewire
card in a desktop computer, but there are lots of people out there
using camcorders with dead Firewire ports. :-(