Newbie, question for Firewire card cable

GeoffLONDON

GeoffLONDON

GeoffLONDON

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Hello all, thank you for reading my question.
I'm a complete newbie and I'm starting off by just fitting an old firewire card in my old pc.

Question.
What cable, and or adapter do I need to connect power to my firewire card? I'll need about 80mm of length in the cable to reach the card. Thanks again for any help.
G.
Image. 1
Image. 2
 
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The one on the card looks like it is an internal USB connector. A female to female internal USB header cable?

The second one looks like a floppy power connector. You can get molex power adapters that supply power to a floppy.

I'd wait until you get confirmation from others before you buy anything.

Can you get the model number of the card? You can find manuals online for most things, even if they're old.
 
Hello Tetras
P. S. The power cables /Connectors in the photo.
The floppy? Cable comes directly from the pc power unit, the other cable/connector, sata? stems from the rom drive.
Thank you the reply. Here is the card I've used.
Firewire card
Card Serial
 
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Does the card have any functionality at all presently?

Sometimes the card's external connection is optional, but it's a very long time since I used anything with firewire.

Unfortunately, I can't find any distinguishing model numbers that I can google for a manual.

My guess is that the card is designed to connect to an internal USB header.
 
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Hi Welcome to the forums

What you're seeing on the card is not a power connecter, but almost certainly a header connection for another firewire port that you can hook up to either the case front panel (if it has it, unlikely these days) or a firewire back plate similar to the ones you get to connect up motherboard USB headers.

If you get a firewire backplate make sure it's got a Header connector on the cable that is on the back of it, and not simply got a firewire socket.

IIRC both firewire and USB used the same basic 10 pin connector, but with different pins blanked out and usually a different colour.

The newer picture reinforces that idea for me, as i've seen similar layouts for various cards, where you might have the card proving an external port or two, and an internal header for either a front panel connector or an optional backplate.
 
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Thank you Tetras & Werewolf.
That's so informative. When I fitted the firewire card, I frankly didn't check to see if it's functioning. I wrongly assumed it needed power. So literally now I will try it out, By the way, the reason I've fitted this card to an old pc is purely for me to transfer some old family MiniDV video tapes, to back them up.

Thank you again. With forums like this and people like yourselves, it makes attempting such pc hardware repairs. Builds etc. So much less intimidating for complete novices like myself.
G.
 
The last firewire device I used needed it's own power supply.

The card installed in the pc (a combo usb/firewire) didn't have any internal power connections or cables attached on the inside of the case, it was just put in the pci(e) slot and that was it.

Issue nowadays will be drivers imo, I was struggling with drivers back when I was using it on vista.....
 
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lsg1r said:
The last firewire device I used needed it's own power supply.

The card installed in the pc (a combo usb/firewire) didn't have any internal power connections or cables attached on the inside of the case, it was just put in the pci(e) slot and that was it.

Issue nowadays will be drivers imo, I was struggling with drivers back when I was using it on vista.....
Click to expand...
I think, and i'm not 100% on this, but I think one of the firewire standards provided power down the cable so the card would have needed power, but AFAIK the older ones didn't.

Much the same way US1 and 2 were IIRC limited to 500ma per port but there were variants that could supply more (usually a special one on the motherboard) and I think USB 3 by default supplies about twice what USB2 does.

I've seen a load of expansion cards for various things where some versions might need a power connector and other don't, usually depending on a combination of what revision the external connection is (IE USB 1/2/3 , Firewire 400/800 etc), and the interface to the PC as IIRC PCIE can supply more power to an expansion card than PCI (something like 75 watts vs 25 on the original PCI's).
 
Werewolf said:
I think, and i'm not 100% on this, but I think one of the firewire standards provided power down the cable so the card would have needed power, but AFAIK the older ones didn't.

Much the same way US1 and 2 were IIRC limited to 500ma per port but there were variants that could supply more (usually a special one on the motherboard) and I think USB 3 by default supplies about twice what USB2 does.

I've seen a load of expansion cards for various things where some versions might need a power connector and other don't, usually depending on a combination of what revision the external connection is (IE USB 1/2/3 , Firewire 400/800 etc), and the interface to the PC as IIRC PCIE can supply more power to an expansion card than PCI (something like 75 watts vs 25 on the original PCI's).
Click to expand...
Quick google seems to say fw400 could supply 7volts and fw800 was 45w with some specific amp/volt limitations. Clearly not enough for what I was connecting so that might be the main reason in my case.
 
Thank you once again for the info.

Update. With my setup and this particular card, The card is working without having separate power connected.

My issue now seems to be my old dv player, So once I've replaced the minidv player, I will then be able to check if the firewire card is fully functioning.

G.
 
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