On Feb 7, 2005, at 6:05 pm, Tom Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
If you have a peripheral that draws its power from the Mac through a FireWire cable, can an overly long cable significantly reduce the power getting to the peripheral? I've got an analog-to-digital video converter box at the end of a fifteen foot FW cable that has died twice on me, and I'm wondering if that's why. This G-4 is also loaded with internal hard drives and cards that may be straining its power supply to begin with.
How is the box dying? Does it stop working temporarily or permanently (requiring replacement)?
The FireWire (400) standard specifies a maximum cable length of 4.5 meters
(~15 feet), so you should be OK purely on length. Voltage drops for the
the amount of current should be pretty small. A slightly more relevant
question is how much power is your converter box drawing? Apple's FireWire
buses typically supply a maximum of 15 watts (that's for towers, powerbooks
and ibooks are about half that). This power is shared over all the FireWire
buses and all the FireWire devices on all the buses; so lots of devices =
not much power. If you're drawing lots of power then a powered FireWire
hub might be in order.
Another possibility, if the box is failing temporarily, might be interference.
Longer cables are subject to more interference than short(er) cables.
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