Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Non powered firewire cables!

OK, to follow up...
Turns out that the custom-made cables by Red's preferred vendor actually pass power... so no good for this application.
I went ahead and sourced a "port isolator" product as an alternative. It's a little pigtail that you plug in between the computer and the drive. It passes data but not power.
http://www.angledcables.com/firewire-800-port-isolator--8009.html
I think someone further back in the thread had suggested this type of product. I imagine it would certainly eliminate the threat of over-voltage. In my testing it worked as well as a straight cable, in terms of performance.
Brent and some others at Red have these and are evaluating them. But as far as I can see this solves the "powered 800" problem. Perhaps Brent or someone on the Red Team can comment. Certainly their endorsement is what we need to use these in the field.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Yes, we did some initial tests with this product at RED and found it did not pass power via FW800.

BC
 
ok so. for the RED drives, the official suggestion from RED is what?

buy this cable? and use the power adapter?

or can we use the power adapter and a normal firewire 800 cable if we do it in a certain sequence?

is there any time where we can use just a firewire800 cable and not use the power adapter?

thanks Brent and RED team
 
Plug in the power adapter to your RAMs or RAIDs first, then plug in the interface cable to the computer. Shouldn't be a problem. Haven't had a problem yet on my end <knock wood>. Non-powered FW cables? ...Fuggetaboutit.

Solution? RED should have disabled the power leads on the Drives and RAMs. Or eliminated the power pathway on the host interfaces altogether. Problem solved. ...Or designed in proper connectors with load protection. Firewire, and more so FW800 devices for some reason, have a bad habit of cooking themselves. Especially when you chain them up. This is not a RED problem, but very widespread and was a problem even before RED Drives existed. The standard is flawed. But that doesn't mean other measures couldn't have been taken to prevent this.

I think the total number of people who have experienced cooked drive connectors is actually quite small. But I've never understood why more precautions were not taken or at least why drives and RAMs aren't shipped with a giant neon sticker that tells people to always power the device with the included AC adapter.

...Speaking of AC adapters, it's a moot point now that Drives and RAMs are discontinued. But they should have been available in the store for easy ordering and made cheap. Always had to supply the AC adapter with the media and hope that those working with the media would actually use them. But on 1 out of every 3 rentals, the AC adapters would go missing and never be found. Sure, I can charge people for them, but then I have to contact RED to let my bomb squad rep try and fumble around and figure out how to get me a replacement. Easier to just go to RatShack and buy an equivalent, which I did, but they only have their AdaptaPlug units -- expensive.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
...Speaking of AC adapters, it's a moot point now that Drives and RAMs are discontinued. But they should have been available in the store for easy ordering and made cheap. Always had to supply the AC adapter with the media and hope that those working with the media would actually use them. But on 1 out of every 3 rentals, the AC adapters would go missing and never be found. Sure, I can charge people for them, but then I have to contact RED to let my bomb squad rep try and fumble around and figure out how to get me a replacement. Easier to just go to RatShack and buy an equivalent, which I did, but they only have their AdaptaPlug units -- expensive.
Click to expand...

Jeff-
I'm not really concerned about the power supplies, those are certainly available from red and many other vendors.

I don't believe this is a moot point because raids/rams are discontinued, as this is what the majority of what productions are currently shooting on. This can be a problem for years because of the mass circulation of these drives.

This is about the non-powered Firewire cables. If that's what's required, then RED should do something about it, immediately.
 
Yeah, power supplies are minor details, I was picking nits.

Non-powered firewire cables are of no concern and not needed. Best thing to do is just power the drives and RAMs with the power supply and you'll be fine. I think RED definitely needs to make a much more noticeable statement that people should be doing this. RED really should have just disabled power pathways in the host interface of the Drives and RAMs so it forces people to run off the AC adapters. But they didn't.

Overall, I think the failure rate has been rather low and that's probably the reason why we don't see much in terms of action here. That and most any Firewire HDD will eventually cook itself if run often enough under load with FW bus power. Makes me wonder why RED even bothered putting Firewire connectors on them in the first place. They should've given us USB2 (just in case) and made the primary user interface eSATA.

Additionally, it's just as likely for someone to fry their Firewire port on their computer as it is to fry it on a RED Drive or other external drive system.

I wonder about the RED-RAM and how vulnerable it is. I've always followed the AC power practice with them as with the drives, but I don't think they draw as much power, especially if under load.
 
CJ Roy said:
This is the first I've ever heard of this. Non-powered FW cables? I understand plugging the power supply, but specialized FW cables that no one really makes?

This is bullshit. There are plenty of FW bus powered devices out the in the world that work just fine. Customers getting dinged for this, without WARNING or SOLUTIONS from RED is throwing their loyal customers under the bus.
Click to expand...

Before we go down this path for the n'th time, let me go step in again.

This is NOT ONLY A RED-DRIVE or RED-RAM issue. In the link Harry posted (http://www.angledcables.com/firewire-800-port-isolator--8009.html), these are not solely for RED - it is a drive, in general, issue. In the product description for this product, it states: "Why would I need this? This is used to protect a FireWire 800 device. from bus power overflow. ... Compatible with FireWire 800 it doesn't matter what brand, make or model your FireWire device is, as long as it's a standard 9pin, it works."

Listen, people have asked for some best practices on when powering their RED-DRIVES. And we have said to use the AC power adaptor. Why would we include it if it was not part of the process? We have said with drives (RED-DRIVES and other drives), a great practice is to use a non-powered FW800 cable to prevent bus power overflow causing damage.

So, feel free to say how "bullshit" we are and how we are throwing our customers under the bus. But the fact of the matter is that this issue is very small (as Jeff surmised) but for the people who have had issues with drives, they have asked "what can I do to help prevent this?". We said use the provided power adaptor. If you want to be extra-cautious, then don't power via FW800. This cable is not "required" - or else we would have provided it.

To Jeff's points on design, sure, we certainly learned lessons in every product we made and are applying them to our future products.

I really just do not get the venom on some people's posts here. The reported issue is not specific to RED. The reported best practices are not specific to RED.

I am done replying on this thread. Call me at 949.206.7900 if you want to continue the conversation.

BC
 
Hey Brent

Sorry if you'd rather not reply - I just have a suggestion.

Can the power connection at the back of the Lemo, inside the drive, be disconnected? I think that a simple operation with the touch with a soldering iron could make a RED drive only power-able through it's wall wart power connector.

Just thinking . . .
 
Or rather, could we disconnect the power connection inside the drive at the FIREWIRE connector - is what I meant to say. Duh.
 
CJ Roy said:
This is RED's own specialized drives that we've all bought and if RED was aware of the problem they should take steps to not only prevent this problem, but give or offer a solution so that their hardware doesn't take dives from simply being plugged in. If this is happening with camera owners who baby their equipment, what about rental houses?

I just sent two of my RAMS to work on FD5 in 3D in Canada and I got to worry about this? Total bullshit.
Click to expand...

If you do a search and you'll find that this a firewire problem on every device out there including macs, cameras, drives, etc. Firewire chipsets can blow for many reasons and as much as you can try to prevent it completely the only 100% solution is to not include firewire altogether. Bullshit is a bit harsh for something that's endemic to the standard and affects every who includes firewire on their devices.
 
Ouch...
Well, more anger and confusion... I did nt mean to start a tempest in a teapot here.
Brent was working through this with me and I think it's really unfair to slam Red. Could the potential for overvoltage have been anticipated and prevented by a protection circuit? Maybe... I don't know. And as they have indicated, the failure rate from overvoltage has been fairly low. I only pursued a solution because I had $600 worth of damage to a drive.
But the isolator seems to solve the problem nicely. BTW, it was brought to my attention by Mitch Gross at Abel. They have FW400 isolators for their Panasonic decks, as they had issues with the ports burning out.
And just to be clear, even though some here are saying that it's OK, just plug the power in first... or, it's OK, just plus the FW800 in first... neither is true. No matter what sequence you plug them in, you can overvolt. Using a non powered FW 800 cable OR one of these isolators is the only way to ensure protection. Power over the AC adapter, data over the FW800.
Soon it wil be moot as we will all switch over to SSD's! :)
Cheers,
Harry
 
Harry Clark said:
Soon it wil be moot as we will all switch over to SSD's! :)
Click to expand...


Not unless everyone decides to dump Red Drives all together. I won't..

It's a bit scary to see what's happening with the drives though. It's been
out for just about three years, and it's going to go away.

Modularity anyone...?

Just my 2 wons.
 
My apologies for my harsh language... I'm coming off of several shoots where it just seems like every piece of gear Red makes just doesn't work without messing up at least a couple times a day. It's beyond exhausting and frustrating.

That said, however widespread this problem is (non bus powered cables), a lot of us are hearing about it for the first time on this thread. So it's not very well known and even lesser known are the solutions with non-bus powered FW cables. It seems there should be a large effort to notify and/or rectify the problems pertaining to these instances.

Some sort of awareness outside of a customer's report of what we'd consider reasonable use and wear of purchased equipment is in need.

Again, my apologies for being harsh in my earlier posts.
 
Sorry if we lost you Brent, I hope I wasn't one of the ones who put you off.

I have now received my FW800 isolator cables from USBFirewire.com. I went with them rather than angled cables - I think the international shipping was cheaper or something. They also make them because of the general problems people have with the firewire ports on all sorts of devices blowing.

My testing proves they do not pass power so perhaps they could be another source of these cables for you guys to test in your RED labs. I have not yet had time to do any tests to see if they affect transfer speeds adversely or anything else.I will try and keep you posted.
 
Thanks Quentin.
Yes, I believe this is a good "best practice" to follow when powering from the Red Drive Power Supply and using Firewire to move data.
Can you post a direct link to the product you chose?
Nice to have options...
I think Brent was not put off by discussion, debate, or even the critique of Red's lack of information regarding the use of non-powered cables. It was the tone and rudeness of some of the posts (and sadly there seems to be no shortage of such posts on reduser)
In CJ's defense, he did apologize. And he IS right in saying that it's really Red's job to outline "best practices" for the safe use of their products, and not leave it up to the community to figure it out.
Let's remember that it is a RARE problem, and now the information is out there, and we can all take appropriate steps to mitigate the problem.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top