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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Is anyone else losing the Firewire 800 port on their Red Drives?

Yes, it could be a firewire port problem.

I have a JVC HD100 and it was a big issue for owners. Many operators were losing their ports by not first turning everything off before plugging in. Even putting a firewire plug in at a slight angle can cause you to lose a port.

Rob
 
Rob Castiglione said:
Yes, it could be a firewire port problem.

I have a JVC HD100 and it was a big issue for owners. Many operators were losing their ports by not first turning everything off before plugging in. Even putting a firewire plug in at a slight angle can cause you to lose a port.

Rob
Click to expand...

Hi Rob,

Just to confirm safest operating procedure - is the safest method to power down the Red camera before you remove the Red Drive and similarly power down the DIT station (Mac Pro) before plugging the Red Drive in? In the meantime I'll try and track down one of those firewire port isolator cables - seems very sensible advice...cheers!
 
Hi Dave,

They are good questions and I think that only Red can answer them - I was only drawing inferences from past experience so I am reluctant to give any advice about the Red (particularly as I dont get mine for several weeks). JVC's advice to owners after a spate of burnt out ports was to turn off all devices before connecting and disconnecting any firewire devices.

Replacing a firewire port on the JVC cost around $1,000!

Regards

Rob
 
Powering everything down before plugging in and unplugging the drives, both on the camera and DIT station is going to add a huge amount of pointless waste time on set. (Maybe even more than using USB 2 to start with?)

There must be some other way round this.

We've never had any other firewire ports fried on other drives, and we use them all the time - it just seems to be specific to the RED Raids.
 
Chris Vincze said:
Powering everything down before plugging in and unplugging the drives, both on the camera and DIT station is going to add a huge amount of pointless waste time on set. (Maybe even more than using USB 2 to start with?)

There must be some other way round this.
Click to expand...

I think we can all agree that Lemo connectors are very well designed and if Red has wisely chosen the pin configuration used on the drive connector, I would hope plugging and unplugging the Lemos from the camera would engage pins in the proper sequence. Might not be necessary to power down the camera.

Then you could use a power-isolated FW cable and AC adaptor on the download station.
 
I don't know if anyone out there is using the firewire 800 port isolator with success - I think we'll probably give them a spin and see how we get on. The only thing I can think that is different in our set-up from before (when we had many months of successful, stress-free Red Drive operation) is the use of a new (or refurbished, to be accurate) Mac Pro.

The more I read up on firewire and the amount of fried ports on Macs and hard drives the more I think it's a truly awful standard, despite the speed advantages (roll on USB 3!!). I don't know if this is something they'll be addressing with firewire 1600...I doubt it somehow.

I found some interesting information regarding safeguards with firewire here:

http://www.wiebetech.com/whitepapers/FireWirePortFailures.php
 
Yea please keep us posted on the FW800 isolator cable and thoughts. I think though from now on we'll be making sure to keep a USB 2.0 cable in with the rest of our Red accessories. I was wondering though, is there an advantage to using a cable with that little cylinder thing on it (i can't think of what to call it, like maybe an inch long, usually near one of the cable, most of the red cables have them) vs. just a cable? Any type better or more reliable than another?
 
Just so you guys know, the current generation of mac pros pass power to the firewire port even when powered down.
 
Sounds like a grounding issue as drives are added. the operator should be holding a drive in one hand, and lovingly touch some bare metal on the camera with the other. Ditto plugging the drive into your content management pipes.

Even when you don't feel anything, there will always be a few stray electrons hanging out on any ungrounded piece of equipment.

Put that ungrounded piece of equipment in a rig attached to a human in rubber soled shoes, and the potential for potential is dangerously (esp if you are made out of CMOS) high.

Can you correlate the port death to handling practices, etc?

I don't think we need go as far as wristbands, but establishing gentle re-grounding procedures might just cure problems of this nature.
 
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