"Hot swapping" firewire can be an iffy thing. I lot of people have blown out firewire ports on cameras, decks and hard drives doing it. I imagine it would be possible to blow a fuse in a camera as well.

The recommended procedure is to have both computer and cam/deck/whatever powered down before connecting via firewire. Most people I know leave the computer on and have the cam/deck/whatever off or even unplugged when connecting the firewire. This is not "recommended" technically but turning the computer off and on all the time can be kind of a pain. Your mileage may very.

If it's a blown fuse in the camera it could be fairly cheap to fix. Try and find a local repair house and have them check it out.

Be careful and don't accidentally plug a 6-pin firewire cable in backwards/upside down. Even though it is keyed, it WILL fit in some ports the wrong way and will do nasty things. Don't ask me how I know...

David

> "Don't ask me how I know..."

Well? How'd yer know? You should NEVER ever place that in front of my eyes!!

Grazie

As someone who works for a rental company all the horror stories you'll read above and elsewhere are entirely true.
Try to image the amount of finger pointing and shouting involved when someone blows a PCB is our $20K VCR and kills their $10K Mac at the same time.

I also believe Canon specifically exclude damage via firewire from their warranty.

This is in part one reason I own a VCR. It gets unplugged once in a blue moon.

Bob.

Whoops. He he.

I managed to blow out two ADVC100's in a row and took just about all other firewire devices with them.

It's probably safer to have a deck that just stays attached to the computer, as Bob describes.

Another thing to consider is that 6-pin firewire ports carry bus power and I think that's the sting that kills things. Presumably you managed to get bus power onto a data pin somehow.

Rob Mack

I sense a huge potential market in 6-pin cables with the power pins not connected. These cables would have to have a pretty hefty warning label on them saying "WARNING! These cables do not carry power." I bet whoever introduces them would sell a million of them overnight.

"Be careful and don't accidentally plug a 6-pin firewire cable in backwards/upside down. Even though it is keyed, it WILL fit in some ports the wrong way and will do nasty things"

Yup.
A few years back I did that with a brand new cam right out of the box. Needless to say, I blew the port. For the next week about the only thing that came out of my mouth was.... IDIOT!

Is it safer when only using a 4 pin to 4 pin cable?

You'd need to remove the power from the computer's connector. Simplest way to do that is to just use 4-pin connectors if you've got 'em.

Assuming that a 6-pin cable is making data pin contact to a power pin then disconnecting the power leads in the cable won't help. The solution would be something more like an inline 1394 surge protector.

Rob

Several years ago, I lost a Lacie external hard drive when it was plugged into a faulty firewire port on a friend's computer. At the time, we'd not heard of this potential, and figured it was 'infant mortality' with the drive failure.

A few days later, he plugged his a Canon camcorder into the same port and toasted it. We've both been very wary of firewire since, and I always try to use 4-pin cables whenever possible.

I use a Kramer PT-1FW to protect my AJA IO against this, has worked perfectly also under difficult circumstances.

Everyone:

As always, thanks for the timely and very useful responses. I'm not totally sure if my camera is totally toasted, as I am on holiday right now (sponging off relatives!). I'll look into it as soon as I return home. I did not know of the existience of the Kramer device - I'll definitely pick one of those up and also check into the 4-wire cables. I'm afraid an HDV deck is way out of my budget, but if my HV20 is truly dead, perhaps a dedicated HDV camera used as a deck would be my option. Looking into the videocams available today, it looks like I need to pick up a HDV cam soon before they disappear entirely.

Happy New Year,
Paul

Two years ago when I bought a then-brand-new computer with built-in Firewire port on the front, I burned out a disk drive and two cameras (one cheap and one not-so-cheap) -- within less than 10 minutes -- before I remembered that a colleague had recently, similarly had a fried-Firewire-disk incident under the same circumstances; then I woke up to what was happening.

Turned out that the Firewire port on the rear card inserted INTO the computer worked fine, but that the "built-in" front-panel Firewire port would burn out anything plugged into it, hotswap or no hotswap.

The shop where I've bought my computers for many a year stood behind the system they sold me, and paid to replace one of the cameras. Better than nothing. The shop stopped configuring built-in Firewire ports into its systems, when the motherboard manufacturer and the port vendor both denied responsibility for the problem.

I don't know if that's what's happened to you -- but BEWARE of plugging anything else into that port, until you know for sure.

EDIT: In my case, the burned-out cameras still worked as cameras; it was just that they could no longer communicate over their Firewire connectors.

"Turned out that the Firewire port on the rear card inserted INTO the computer worked fine, but that the "built-in" front-panel Firewire port would burn out anything plugged into it, hotswap or no hotswap."

That's EXACTLY what happened in my situation, as noted above. Fortunately, we figured it out after just two blown devices.

I was indeed using the front-panel FireWire port - I had suspected that might also be part of the problem, although I have had many capture sessions using that port. My older Sony cam failed in the way you describe - the camera still could record and play, but I couldn't capture anything via FireWire. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Unless you NEED the power line, and I haven't seen any Firewire-powered peripherals in many years, then put a 6- to 4- pin adapter on the PC or deck and always use a 4-pin to 4-pin cable. There's no power in the 4-pin connector, so an accidental touch of the data to the +5V line is impossible.

If the 6-pin connector on the PC is from a header on the mother-board, cut the power line. Problem solved.

"I haven't seen any Firewire-powered peripherals in many years".

I have a Presonus Firebox which has a 6-pin connector and can be powered via the cable or with its own power supply if the computer only has 4 pins. I have only used it a few times and always hot plugged it, with no ill effects. From now on I will only cold plug it and play safe.

My three Sony cameras that have firewire only have 4-pin sockets. I have always hot plugged them with no ill-effect.

The fact that the two documented failures were both from using the front panel FW connectors leads me to suspect that both the FW header on the motherboard and the corresponding connector were not foolproofed in design and whoever assembled the PC managed to misconnect the two causing the power lead(s) to be connected to the signal leads. Wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened.

Now you guys have me nervous. I've connected my HV30 to my two PCs (both front and back ports) with no ill effects, but now I'm leery, especially since my old Sony camcorder (trv-460) *did* blow its firewire port some years back.

In my case, I did build these two computers, so I was careful when assembling the firewire connections for the front. Still, it sounds like a good investment to buy that little protector for $80.

That "little protector" will only prevent damage caused by static discharge, will not protect your equipment from power applied to signal leads.

Let me ask this then, since I'm not clear on it. If I've successfully connected to both computers, front and back, numerous times (easily more than a dozen), does that imply that there's no concern, so long as I always connect the connector to the PC correctly?

I'd have to check my HV30 manual again, but I think it says to connect first, then turn the camera on.