In general firewire is 4 or 6 conductor. At the camcorder end it is 4-wire. (The 6-wire includes power in the added two conductors.)

Firewire is a high speed balanced serial data cable. Electrically speaking it is a sort of cousin of RS-422 and ethernet, but faster. And the signal protocol (commands, etc.) are different. The speed makes it a bit fussy about the cable used - impedance matching, losses, and that sort of thing to avoid echos, phase delay, and noise on the line that could corrupt the data signal.

Could one splice two firewire cables to make a longer one. Probably, but if not careful one could end up with less than satisfactory results.

Question to Rob;
I have a Dell laptop too (an Inspiron 8200), but for some reason 4-4 pin cables won't work with my non-S XL1 (tried several). What model Dell do you have? I have spoken to Dell and Canon about this but each say the other one's at fault.
Sad result is I lug a Firewire PC-Card around with me, it's got a 6pin connector and works perfectly, but it's not the best solution seeing as the onboard firewire is now out of a job...

Thanks for any help,

Kai.

I am not sure that I would do that (cutting the wire). It is properly insulated so it doesn't receive any interference, and cutting it would break the insulation (you couldn't mend that back together the same way it originally was), possibly allowing interference. But it might work...I wouldn't do it buy hey, if you end up doing it, post back here to let us know if it works!

Self powered device (battery or plug into wall outlet) require only a 4 pin, but may be fitted with a 6 pin connection. Unpowered devices need the 6 pin, the extra 2 wires supply power from the buss.

Kai,

I have a Dell Latitude C800. What OS are you running? I'm running
Windows 2000 Professional. Check to see if the laptop sees
your firewire port at all (it might very well be I had to enable
the port in the Bios first, not sure).

If I go to the Device Manager I see the following device under
IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers:

Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.

If you plug the camera in, nothing seems to happen. But if I
startup Premiere I can just control the camera fine (I have
selected the Canon camera in Premiere first though).

Hope this helps you some.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Kai,

<SNIP>

If you plug the camera in, nothing seems to happen. But if I
startup Premiere I can just control the camera fine (I have
selected the Canon camera in Premiere first though).

Hope this helps you some. -->>>

Ah! Well, I have XP Pro and Avid Xpress DV, and like on yours, my camera doesn't get recognized even though the firewire port is fine. Scenalyzer doesn't see the cam either btw.
The really weird thing is that if I daisy chain the camera through an external FW disk all is well (so 4-6 pin to disk, then 6-4 to camera) - the camera gets detected and I can control it from Avid...
So, I'll try to install Premiere and see if that makes a difference...
Thanks for your help!

Kai.

Can't you just leave it daisy chained then? My gut says this has
something todo with how XP handles things....

Good luck!

Well, I don't really want to lug around a disk and it's power supply (as it can't be powered by the bus because of the 4-pin connector on the laptop), and besides - it's supposed to work without one, it's what I paid for...
Oh and btw, it's not XP, as Windows 2K and Linux have the same problem, so I'm rather suspecting the hardware on the Dell side of the cable. I'm trying another laptop from a friend tomorrow, different make etc, so that will clinch the issue who's at fault...
Many thanks for letting me pick your brain!

K.

It might very well be a problem on your laptops end. Although
it does sound weird that it works through another device. Weird!

I hope you nail down the problem and get it fixed!!

Just a quick update for those interested; I connected my XL1 to another laptop with integrated (4 pin) firewire. Same deal as with my Inspiron - it wasn't even detected by XP. So it looks like
So my next stop will be the local Canon rep to see if they can figure out if it's anything to do with my camera.

Kailee.

Some systems like to have the camcorder connected and powered on before the PC is powered on to ensure detection. Also, in some cases driver update and/or OS patches may be needed to ensure detection. Be sure all are up-to-date.