Firewire causing lock up

[Matt Rickard]

        When using Parted 1.2.24 to access an external maxtor firewire drive 
(160gb, 
currently 1 big fat32 partition) at /dev/sda, parted locks the system hard.  
When doing a 'parted /dev/sda print' the system also locks hard.  I am using 
kernel 2.4.17, slightly patched - preempt + xfs (on Gentoo Linux).
        Is this a known problem with firewire?  Is this a parted problem, a 
kernel 
problem, or both?

Thanks.