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where is life’s undo button?
So I have a Sony FX1 I use occasionally as a deck when my HVR-M15 deck is busy. It works great as a deck for capture and mostly use it with my windows computers.
So I needed to use it with my FCP and it also worked great. Then I had to use it again on a windows computer and it couldn’t be recognised on any of them. Later I connected it directly to the M15 to do a HDV-HDV dub and the M15 couldn’t see it. I then reconnected it to the FCP computer and it didn’t see it. I rang the local tech guy and he said “never connect the firewire cable directly to a Mac!.. it has a floating earth!!!” He says I have blown out my FX1’s firewire port and it is a $2000 repair job. How can I press the undo button to go back to the time before I fried the camera?!?
I have NEVER had this problem with a PC; even connecting with everything powered on. I didn’t do that with the Mac though… and there is no ‘power’ on the 4 pin firewire plug so go figure!.. solution? I am not going to get it fixed as it still works as a camera; I am just going to buy a cheap one chip HDV for HALF the price of the repair. But I am going to have to be double extra careful with it and the Mac but I don’t know how more careful I could be….
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4 Replies
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Is the first time I heard such a thing appens.
Rafael -
This is a BIG warning in the manual for my DSR-11, and from the rental houses that I rent the AJ-HD1200 decks from. Have the decks powered off before you plug in the firewire cable. NOT THE MAC…the deck. If the deck is on when you connect the cable, you can blow out the power.
This is because firewire ports also supply power…thus firewire bus powered drives. But this is also true of PCs with firewire…power is also fed out them as well. This isn’t a mac only issue…
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
>>This is a BIG warning in the manual for my DSR-11, and from the rental houses that I rent the AJ-HD1200 decks from. Have the decks powered off before you plug in the firewire cable. NOT THE MAC…the deck. If the deck is on when you connect the cable, you can blow out the power. << Wow...I guess I've been kinda' lucky. I have my DSR-11 and other equipment on a Furman conditioner that I always turn on AFTER I've turned on my computer, and off before I turn the computer off. Good to know! So I guess the operative term is no 'hot-swapping'!
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This is just a guess on my part, but the potential for frying a firewire port is probably when a 6-pin plug is inadvertently forced into the 6-pin port upside-down.
There is a unique shape to the plug to help prevent that from happening but I have heard of one instance in which it was forced in the wrong way.
The 4-pin side of the cable doesn’t have any power and hot-plugging a 4-pin firewire cable shouldn’t be a problem at all since there’s no power to zap any circuitry. But then again, no guarantees. Nothing like being real careful when it comes to expensive equipment… such as a $25,000 Varicam deck!
However, I do recall watching in awe as Steve Jobs hot swapped a portable firewire drive while a Quicktime movie was playing. This was when Firewire was first announced at a MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. I don’t know how he got away with it, but when you own Apple Computer I guess you’re allowed certain freedoms.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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