Attaching Firewire instantly crashes pc!
 

I am having a problem where i plug in my cam to the firewire and the whole compter (98SE) crashes and it restarts. Just wondering if anyone else has experience with this annoying situation.

B.Sundry

Is it a built in 1394 port, or an add on card? Does the camera work with other PCs?

The card is an add on 2 port pci, im am about to try the camera on another pc, and also another cable if i can.

Make sure the camera is TURNED OFF when you connect the cables. Then
TURN IT ON.

Windows 98 (SE) is starting to become a very old operating system. Especially
with modern day technology like firewire, DV and editing. It is probably better
to upgrade to XP if you can. This usually solves these kind of issues (unless
your firewire card is bad).

I know 98 was bad about USBs, and they fixed some of that with SE. However, Firewire may be a different story. If you have connected the cable while the cam was powered, you might have fried a 1394 port. Check your camera by hooking a second camera up to it with the 1394 cable, and see if you get anything. Then try new drivers, replacing the card as a last resort.

What Keith said...........drivers drivers drivers................ If you can get the dough, think about jumping to XP.

Brendan,

I started DV editing on a P2-400 (W98-SE) with pci-card firewire. It worked, but you will soon become unhappy with the 4 gig file size limit!

i just tested the cable on another computer and thats rulled out.

Also i ghosted my machine and it still kept crashing, but not straight away this time, then it worked, then it didnt,

i also had a trial of Xp isntalled on another partition but it didnt recognise the cam at first either,eventually it saw it was a jvc cam,but wouldnt fireup in premiere 6 1/2.

im thinking of just buying another card off ebay. But whats the deal with drivers?
The card ive got now didnt come with drivers, but can i install something to troubleshoot the card?

ps. i have ghosted my machine about 30 rimes in 3 years and never had a problem, i have plugged in my cam when its on when the computers oon/off vice versa.

Anyway,
I appreciate the help

I have given up on 1394 except when there is no other choice (e.g. the camcorder's only digital output.) It would take a very long post to list all the problems I've experienced with 1394 (on a PC with XP Pro) over the years.

I have finally begun to replace my drives with either USB2 interfaces or SATA. The USB 2 for laptops; SATA for systems that can accomodate the card.

The problems with 1394 can be boiled down to - badly designed connectors and a quirky interface that is hard to troubleshoot. If you are doing editing that requires frequent plugging and unplugging of cables - stay away from 1394, eventually either the cable, the male connector (which end?), or the female end WILL fail and drive you nuts trying to pinpoint the problem.

PS - as has been suggested - switch to XP Pro SP2; and if you are up for it, you can change the drive's housing from 1394 to USB2. This can be done as along as you know someone who knows what he or she is doing.

I had my USB 2.0s crashing my computer -- turned out to be the Asus motherboard. I advance RMA'd the board and the one they sent me had a bad BIOS chip... quick swap from the old board and everything works now!

it seems if i start up the pc with the cam off, and then turn it on before opening premiere it seems to work 2/3 times.

Thanks for the help .

b.sundry