Regarding Firewire (IEEE-1394), apparently Freebob is
pretty darn
close to getting stuff to work (they even have some reports stating
that audio works just fine on select devices). See
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page for more info.
As the jackd backend works they currently want to write an ALSA driver
and are looking for people who help working on it. Any volunteers?
Best regards
ce