Don't fry your Firewire

Although firewire is hot swapable ie you can connect and disconnect firewire devices while they are turned on, there many people who have fried the firewire port in their MiniDV camcorder when hot swapping it.

Also Apple doesn't do a good job of making users aware that they need to unplug all FireWire devices prior to any System Update. A designer friend forgot about it, and [fried] his FireWire [port].

I don’t think this issue is confined to certain makes and models of cameras. I have seen it happen to many different camera makes (Sony, Cannon, Panasonic, JVC etc) all of varying ages. I have also seen this happen on external hard drives (LaCie, Maxtor). I have seen it happen on consumer grade and semi-pro equipment. I think it is a ‘generic’ firewire issue particularly prevalent with older computers both PC & eMacs. I am yet to hear of anyone experience this issue with new generation iMacs, Macbooks or Powermacs.

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Shane Elevato
Head of Art & Technology
Media Coordinator
Oberon High School

As with most electrical devices, care must be exercised in connecting equipment.

As I mentioned some time ago I used to work for and Apple dealer, sell and service equipment and we had a batch of firewire cables that were causing ports to die. We advised clients to buy a more expensive cable which we knew was proven to work efficiently. The reseller stopped buying low priced firewire cables and our customer were happy campers.

To back up our research here's an extensive spill on FireWire port failures.

http://www.wiebetech.com/pressreleases/FireWirePortFailures.htm

Cheers,

Marco Marchant

APA citation:
Russell, R. (2016, July 04, 02:03 pm). Don't fry your Firewire.
     Retrieved April 27, 2024, from http://www.rupert.id.au/firewire/index.php

Last refreshed: April 27 2024. 04:08.18 am

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Last refreshed: April 27 2024. 04:08.18 am

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.