Firewire Port Protection
 

Has anyone used this?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...rd_Pro_DV.html

Is it any good?

I've wondered about this myself & can't imagine it not doing what it's supposed to do. However, the specs on B&H's site lists a "data transfer rate" at 50MB/sec? FW400 is 400 megaBITS per sec, not megabytes :)

According to the internet 400Mb=50MB.


-A

DOH! Where's my head? You're right! I don't know what I was thinking. I suppose it's just I've never seen any firewire spec listed in MB... only Mb.

Actually it's 47.68... but what's a few MB? :)

Of course, I'd much rather have the 8 pin ports in the cameras because they have the hard plastic shell around the plug. Those 4pin plugs are just so dang flimsy. And the plug usually has a huge hunk of plastic on it so it's really easy to jar the thing.

I'm not an electrical engineer (not a complete novice either though), but I think if you connect the firefire cable to your computer first, and then your camera (not the other way around), the cable should be grounded and any static electricity should have been discharged before attaching to the camera. Can anybody here, with a better knowledge of electricity, confirm (or deny) that?

I've always connected to computer first (I don't really give a rip if I toast a $10 card), and then, just for good measure, touched the end of the cable to the computer frame before connecting to camera. So far (fingers crossed) I've never fried a firewire port on a camera.

What I do is: connect wire to camera first, then put one finger on metal part of FW port on computer, other finger (from other hand) on metal shield on FW cable. This should discharge any static electricity.

Worked fine till now.

Firewire Port Protection
 

Slightly off topic, since most PC firewire ports are 6 pin and my VX is a 4 pin port, I worried about bad cables. The extra 2 pins carry power, not signal. So I put an extension PCI in, with 2 firewire and four USB 2.0 sockets. I modified one of the firewire ports to remove the power from pin 1 by cutting the track to the pin. Now I have no chance of frying the VX because of a bad cable. I always use the one modified socket for video I/O.

As for grounding, my cable is permanently connected at the PC end and I ground the cable and always plug the VX in before powering it on. No problems so far.

Cheers, Ian

That's the conventional - and correct - wisdom.