David Kidd

Same thing happened to me. I was in a hurry it was dark and I put the cable in upside down. It fried my main board in my camera. Cost me 1900.00 to get fixed so beware of doing what I did!!! the technician asked me if I had connected to a Mac. Seems there is a history with them.

David Scattergood

Happened on an old camera of mine...right in the middle of one of my first jobs. I had to go out and buy the cheapest firewire camcorder I could find to use as a tapedeck.
I now deal with connecting the JVC like I would if I were creating a house of flimsy cards!

Has anyone had experience of a blown firewire port whilst using the Kramer?
I spend a bit on one and still not entirely sure whether the piece of mind is justified?

On a footnote I think a monitor has recently blown on my iMac - cannot see footage on the 2nd monitor (and both the cable and 2nd monitor work ok) :(

Steven Garay

So I understand the part about powering off before connecting but is it necessary to power off BOTH devices before disconnecting the firewire from your cam. Someone else asked this question but no one answered.

Randy Johnson

You know I have to say this, this topic is really killing me mainly because I have 2 cameras a very small buisness its a side thing and I cant afford repairs like these. Im sorry if I rant a bit but I have been using Firewire since it came out I have swapped and swapped and never burned a port before this camera. I think the scary thing is from what I have read here and what techs have told me give me the impression that they dont know why there blowing. If its the voltage that sure a 4 pin adapter or port issolator would solve the problem because it removes the power yet they still tell us to power down even when switching the switch. I can understand why they want the 6 pin (strength and firmness) but then why cant they disable the power from within the camera? or better yet put in a fuse ro reset button? Ive heard other companys having firewire problems but not so many. After losing my ports I talked to the JVC rep about a deck asking if there would be a cheaper solution in the works maybe a deck that just played for ingestion. He told me they dont want to sell decks anymore they want to sell hard drives. Why would I buy a hard drive that is dependant on this seamilly flimsy firewire port? Im sorry im just a little frustrated right now I could be looking at spending the price of new camera (or close to it) to get my 2 cameras fixed.

thanks
randy

Bill Pryor

I've been personally involved with three different firewire drives that fried when unplugged with the power on, so I always turn off the camera or drive before unplugging the firewire cable. I know people who hotswap them all the time and have had no trouble, but sometimes it happens. I come from the old Avid scssi drive days when just looking at a drive the wrong way would fry it, so I still power down before attaching or removing the camera or drive.

Randy Johnson

Did these drives pull power from the bus or do they have a power supply?

Bruce Foreman

This is happening to several brands of cameras with a 4 pin port on the cam.

Elijah Lynn

This just happened to us this weekend with an XL-2. This is the second time it happened. After the 1st time Canon said to plug 6 pin in first then 4 pin into XL-2 then turn camera on. I suspect it to be the Firewire port on the mainboard because I just plugged my Sony TRV-27 in because I knew it worked and I brought a cable that I knew worked. No go. Tried another computer, no go, tried a 4 pin to 4 pin to my laptop, NO GO.

This is ridiculous. These manufacturers cannot even put warning stickers right on the cameras.

Some one should be responsible for this because a $300 repair for the XL-2 (the second time) doing it "THEIR WAY" is just silly especially since the downtime may end up costing us some big money. They should have mentioned getting a foolproof device to make sure this NEVER happens again.

I lost a nice little consumer camcorder too.

Alex Humphrey

They don't draw power enough to operate, however they will recharge (draining your main battery while doing it.) The result is, assuming you have AB or IDX camera battery, your DTE will last longer in the field because it's pulling a little juice from the main battery during shooting recharging as it's still expending it's own battery. How much? I don't know.. I haven't paid attention, but I would guess 30 or more minutes... maybe more...

so DON"T leave it plugged into the camera and have your IDX/AB battery installed on your camera while traveling. You might find when you get there that you lost an hour or more of run time on your camcorder.. just to keep TOPPING OFF your DTE drive. It will drain your battery dead if ignored for a day... But no one should be leaving their battery intalled on their JVC's anyway while traveling or storing. Not that i did it myself at all. And if I did, I would CERTAINLY NEVER ADMIT TO IT HERE! :)

Stuart Nimmo

I've been very concerned to make my GY-HD 201E(b) firewire connection as foolproof as possible. An added urgency is that I have a lengthy hand-held shoot this week and while firewired to a wandering lap top computer..... A recipe for an inadvertent unplugging disaster if I ever saw one.

It seems to me that there are two basic problems:

1. Not to forget to power down before plugging or unplugging the firewire.
2. The danger of a plug being pulled out carelessly or inadvertently.

I think this solution for a 200 series covers both dangers and seems to work well.

What you need:

1. A dedicated 6pin-6pin firewire cable
2. a narrow roll of black stretch rubber auto-adhesive tape, (the kind used on pipe work that binds permanently with itself, NOT black plastic insulating tape).
3. A 1 1/2 foot length of Velcro The 'Hooked' faced half should be the strong auto adhesive type, the soft looped faced part should not be adhesive.
4 1 pr of sharp scissors

On the 200 series:

Just to the front of the HDV/DV switch and above the composite plugs there is a space on top of the camera that runs over the top, narrowing in front of the heat fins.

Shape a piece of the self adhesive hooked Velcro to fit this space and stick it snugly into that space.

Immediately under the firewire socket there's the slidable shoulder pad. If you carefully slide your fingers between the pad and the camera chassis, you'll find a dip in the pad with a flat plastic bottom, hidden inside the pad, just above where your shoulder makes contact with it.

Cut another strip of hooked self adhesive Velcro and stick it facing hooks upwards to the plastic base of the inside of the shoulder pad. This is fiddly, but you are already winning!

The Cable:

Cut some 4 inch strips of the rubber insulating tape, peal off the protecting layer. Wind a first loop very tightly (stretch it) around the firewire cable just so that it sticks to itself leaving a long piece hanging lose.

Loop a length of soft Velcro tightly over the rubber tape and around the Firewire cable leaving two long crossed ribbon ends protruding beyond the plug, (it will look like the yellow welcome home ribbon).

Bind the Velcro looped over the cable tightly with the lose end of the rubber tape. Again stretch this tight and onto itself so that the Velcro is frimley trapped under the tape just before the firewire plug, but with the two Velcro ends protruding above and below the V shape plug. you will now find that you can attach these Velcro ends tightly to the the camera top and inside shoulder pad Velcro, and the plug really wont fall or pull out.

To make it easier you can extend the Velcro attached to the camera and the pad with soft Velcro strips and overlap with a hook faced strip to catch the plug Velcro.


Use the same technique on the other end of the Firewire cable - I've stuck self adhesive hooked Velcro to my dedicated laptop above and below the firewire socket, now that end won't inadvertently come out either.

While the cable now sprouts lengths of Velcro, that goes a long way to avoid the power off problem because if that Velcro doesn't remind you to switch things off first, nothing will!

If it's not neatly done it may look a little like the aftermath of a road accident, but it works and could save you a $2000 repair bill

Matt Lehman

Stuart – very nicely done!

JVC – listen up, it’s time for you to step up to the plate and take a foam hammer to some engineers’ head.

I just recently purchased (eBay) a HD100U and suddenly realized the seriousness of this FireWire port issue. So, I have been following all of the advice so far (haven’t been able to build Stuart’s contraption but may engineer my own). I had a strange issue after shooting my first test footage and attempting to capture it using a Dell 630 with a 4 pin FireWire plug. Naturally, I needed to use a 6 pin to 4 pin FireWire cable to make the connection (using Sony Vegas Pro and/or Adobe Premiere Pro). It was very disappointing to watch the video capture (HDV-HD30P) start successfully then promptly started `seizing.’ I started troubleshooting everything I could think of and everything I could find online staying up into the wee hours of morning. The only thing that saved my camera from total destruction was its sexy shape and my wallet.

I decided to purchase a PCMCIA FireWire card with 6 pin ports and a new FireWire cable. I then placed both laptop and camera (on A/C power supply) on a table and connected the new FireWire components (cam powered down). Being extremely careful not to move any connection I started a capture using Vegas (expecting the worse) and pleasantly watched while it captured all of my test footage (differing frame rates - HD/SD) without issue. I also then tried out Adobe OnLocation with great success and a whooping holler from me loud enough for the dog to howl along.

So, I have no clue if I’ve just repeated someone else’s post but if I have kindly excuse me, I’m a tourist here (so far).

I hope someone finds this information useful…oh, and by the way, this camera rocks for what it is and I look forward to shooting some great shorts with it and different lens.

Matt