Second firewire connector

[coriolan]

I have two firewire connectors in my machine. One 6-pin in the back and another 4-pin on the front panel. I have managed to configure the back panel connector, but how do talk to the one on the front? What device is it? I would have read from www.linux1394.org but that does not seem to be responding right now.

[frostschutz]

Depends on how that thing is connected really... is it a dedicated port or a hub internally? personally, I don't like front panel connectors. They often cause problems during data transfer no matter what high quality cable you're using, because the cable inside the case (FPC<->Board) is cheap.

Do you actually need a raw device for the port? Usually you connect hard disks / DVD drives to this thing, which ideally should create some scsi devices (/dev/sd*, /dev/sr*). Cameras and such are usually autodetected by programs that grab the DV stream.

Other than that, there is only raw access, which I don't know nothing about, except that accessing is done via a library (libraw1394 or something). Maybe it comes with a manual.

[coriolan]

It's a dedicated port. I might use to connect it to my laptop with eth1394.

[frostschutz]

I've never used eth1394 so far, but to my knowledge it simulates an ethX device. Are you sure that you have to specify the firewire port to be used? Somehow I don't see why it should be necessary - the idea of firewire is that it should not matter where you plug something, except maybe for speed if you have both ieee1394a and -b ports.

[coriolan]

Hmm, that's possible. I¨ll check when I get back to my home computer (writing from my laptop right now). For some reason my primary source of information www.linux1394.org has been down for the whole weekend.

[frostschutz]

Maybe that site is hotplugged as well

[coriolan]