I fried my FW port, how much will it cost me?

Spartacus

Spartacus

Veteran
MBP 15" 2,16
Had a shoot this morning and wanted to stream DVCpro50 to HDD, HVX wasn´t recognized.
I tried our other HVX, than a FW400 external HDD - nothing.
FW800 is also dead.

Since this seems to happen from time to time, how much is the repair?
Also, was my setup process wrong?
MBP running, pluging in FW cable, pluging other end in HVX, power on the HVX.

I also think about getting a FW adapter for the PCMCIA slot, but then I couldn´t use my eSata drives anymore aaaaaaarghhhhhhhh, why me?
 
Not sure how much the repair costs... I think they have to replace the entire I/O board on that left side though. I had to wait quite a while to get mine replaced when I had a headphone jack issue a while back - something about the manufacturer of that part having some major delay, and I was using a rental for over a month. The repair was free for me, but I was still under warranty. I'm assuming you are not :(

I never, ever connect the camera unless it is already powered on. That burst of power when you turn a device on seems to be the main culprit when firewire ports get fried. Always turn both devices on, then connect them.
 
Will Clegg said:
I never, ever connect the camera unless it is already powered on. That burst of power when you turn a device on seems to be the main culprit when firewire ports get fried. Always turn both devices on, then connect them.
Click to expand...

So I guess I can call myself lucky in the end, that it didn´t happen already 2 years ago...
 
Ok,
repair would cost 1260€!
A new 15" goes for 1500€...

Since new MBPs are rumored for octobre, I was thinking of getting a FW expresscard adapter for capturing ATM.
Is this fast enough? Anyone doing this already?

Also I normaly either capture to a eSata drive (which I can´t if I use the expresscard slot for the FW adapter card) or via the FW800 port (wich is also fried...)
Should I try using USB? It´s for DVCpro50...
Or can I use the second FW400 port on the adapter card for the external HDD?
 
Just becuase we are already talking about this, im going to echo a question: What is the right process to not burn out a firewire port? Also, can it happen in the camera?
 
I feel your pain, Spartacus. That's one thing that bothers me about Apple repairs, outside of Applecare (which is fantastic). The repairs are too often just less expensive than a new computer. We keep a Mac Mini in the office (the home computer... Office, Quicken, email). Last year, the slim drive went bust. The repair was going to be nearly $400 parts and labor. A new, external, FW CD/DVD drive was $120. We opted to skip on the repair.

Aside from the aforementioned power burst, a FW port can also be burned out if connected in the wrong sequence. Because of the differences in pin wiring between 4-pin and 6-pin, always make sure that the 4-pin device is connected first so that the ground on the 6-pin side is ready for any potential issues. Otherwise, both ends (computer and camera) are at risk.
 
You could also open it up and do the repair youself. I changed a logic board in a powerbook last year and it was pretty strait forward (and about $500 cheaper).

To be honest without trying to be disagreeable, I cannot see how turning your camera on afterwards would send any power through the cable to the computer FW port. 4-pin FW 400 (on the HVX) does not support power to operate devices, unlike the 6-pin FW400 on the MBP or 9-pin FW800 on the MBP.

I use a dual FW800 express card adaptor in my MBP and it has plenty of throughput. express 34 is a higher standard than the old 54 version. Problem for you is getting the footage off your cam at the same time as running an e-sata drive. The only way I could see you dong it is using unsupported USB2.0 on the mac and the e-sata in the express 34, or get a panny p2 store and attach it via USB2.0.

No matter what, you will probably be spending some dough...Dual FW400 is probably the cheapest option for now.


J

BTW - I had a protools mac with a bad FW400 jack that fried the oxford 924 FW chip in an external FW RAID. This had to do with the power the computer was trying to send the drive. There was smoke and smell!
 
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