Problems Connecting a V1U to computers

[Alan Craven]

To avoid the risk of Firewire port damage, it is essential to connect the Firewire lead to the computer first. It does not matter whether the computer is powered on or not, the important thing is that the computer grounds the metal outer sleeve of the port. This eliminates any static electric charge - it is this that does the damage.

Now connect the Firewire lead to the camera, with the camera powered off. Finally switch on the camera.

This method is stressed in all the Sony manuals.

[Jeff Allen]

Originally Posted by Jeff Turkali

This is risky, connecting PW devices while powered up. Some have been lucky for months, and then one day they have fried jacks.

Jeff, in principle, I agree with you. However, in my experience, most of the "fried jacks" that I have seen (I work for a major computer company, and used to work for a major computer company named after a fruit...) were caused by one of the following: incorrectly inserting the firewire cable to the computer, inserting a damaged cable, inserting the cable with a device connected at the other end (especially if it is a bus powered device), and a few other reasons.

If you have a known good cable, that is already connected to the computer at the time of booting the system, and then you connect a device that is not bus powered to the opposite end of the cable after booting, I believe that the risk basically zero in "frying the port". Or, no greater than any other random event that could cause a problem with a port. I believe that early on in the the "firewire life", there were also some "questionable" ports that caused the bus to fry due to the power supplied over the cable, but I believe from what I saw when I used to work on problems related to this that the situation is much more robust these days, providing you are using a connector either built in to a reputable name system or good name card.

I will see if I can confirm this from an Electrical Engineering perspective from one of my old contacts at my old computer company, since I have seen this referenced a few times across this and other forums.

[Martyn Hull]

Jody i hope i have not missed this answer as i have only skipped through but have you connected your v1 to a dvd recorder that has a firewire to see if it will play through it.

[Jeff Turkali]

Originally Posted by Alan Craven

To avoid the risk of Firewire port damage, it is essential to connect the Firewire lead to the computer first. It does not matter whether the computer is powered on or not, the important thing is that the computer grounds the metal outer sleeve of the port.

Originally Posted by Jeff Allen

If you have a known good cable, that is already connected to the computer at the time of booting the system, and then you connect a device that is not bus powered to the opposite end of the cable after booting, I believe that the risk basically zero in "frying the port".

Jeff Please do check and report back. As I need to know the exact facts on this matter so I do not wreck the port on a $5,000 camera.

You'll notice the slight variations between Alan and your own statments on this issue. I'd like to know for certain too.

I ruined a 1394 card (on PC), and the FW jack on a Sony DSR 25 deck by having them both powered up when connecting.

[Leslie Wand]

i would have thought that connecting anything firewire 'live' was running a pretty obvious risk given the reports across all the news groups.

i know a number of people with v1's, all of whom have no problem connecting to pc's. i know this isn't mac's, but to blame poor implementation on the camera is a bit far fetched - otherwise the boards would be screaming....

if you treasure your firewire port, be sensible (you don't look one way when crossing a main road), and as suggested, try your camera on other equipment - if it works then the problem lies with your mac....

leslie

[Jeff Allen]

Update to my previous post and questions related to methods used when connecting your camera to a firewire connector.

I have inquired to my former computer mfg employer to one of the firewire engineers there. Here below is some of the key bits of information in his response to me.

First of all, his recommendation was to Never connect a 6 pin connector to any port when powered up while connected to any other device, as this can cause a "Late-VG" (Voltage Ground) issue. "When inserting any 6-pin cable to the Firewire port, if the power pin in the 6-pin connector (cable side) makes the connection to the power pin in the 6-pin connector (MLB side) before the ground pins, power will try flow through the connector to the cable (or vice versa, if the cable is connected to a powered device, which is not recommended).

If the data pin happens to be connected and the ground pin is not connected, the power could potentially be tempted to flow through the data pins.

If that happens, the data pins, which happen to go to the Firewire physical layer chip (i.e. a number of receiver circuitry), will get a voltage level far beyond the typical 1.5V that they use for transferring data. If this happens, the port no longer works."

However, if a cable is already connected to the computer on the 6 pin connector side (fully seated), and you then connect a 4 pin connector to a device such as a camera, his feedback was "Yes, this should be safe. The 6-pin cable is already connected, and the 4-pin does not have power."

He stated that due to the design of the firewire 400 connector, this Late-VG event can happen (I have even seen where a firewire 6 pin connector was inserted in the wrong direction!) but that the FW800 design eliminates this, so there are no issues in inserting FW800 devices while powered.

Therefore, chances of causing damage by powering off the computer to connect the camera, versus have a known good cable with the 6 pin connector already properly seated, and then connecting the camera to the 4 pin connector is probably about equivalent.

The danger arises if you connect the camera first, and then connect the 6 pin connector to a powered on device.

Of course, I am not a an EE (although I do have a science degree), and I am sure that there are other failure modes that can arise, so I apologize in advance if the above appears incomplete or if others take exception to it. However, hopefully it dispels some misconceptions and provides people some information to help make decisions about their workflows related to this aspect of the process.

Also apologize for such a long post!