Thinkpads Forum

I have R31 PIII 1.1 Mhz 30 G HDD os is W2K. SP4.
I am trying to plug in trendnet 2 port firewirepcmcia card in my laptop and trying to connect to sony cam but it seems it is not recognizing the firwire port.

the trendnet model is tfw-h2pc. ieee 1394 2 port firewire.

Did you install the drivers?

if u r asking about sony drivers . yes i did.
If u r asking drivers for pcmcia card then no . i did not . i could not find those drivers.

Apparently Windows 2000 and XP come with the necessary drivers for your firewire card. Here is the page where you can download the Quick Installation Guide for your firewire card.

Most PCMCIA Firewire cards do not provide power.
Firewire (6-wire) can demand up to 1A of 12v power, and the laptop simply doesn't have it. Firewire cards sometimes have DC power adapters to do this, but most often just don't power the bus.

So only self-powered devices can work with these cards, even though it has a misleading 6-pin firewire connector.

That said, most camcorders ARE self-powered and work fine with the 4-wire firewire, so it might not be related.

Is it a battery-powered camera, or a bus-powered camera like the iSight?

Also, the camera has to be in VCR mode to read the tape, but you probably know that.

I second ground_loop. I have tried my firewire card without its pwr supply, and it never sees the camer. Its a shame that they never developed this interface to provide the required amount of power.

Just another thing to carry around.

Storage_Man

Thanks bunch to you all for the support. but is there anyway to power this pcmcia externally. or is it totally useless..and i can throw it.

To answer Ground_loop's q's
It is a sony camcorder which is battery powered.and as u said i am keeping it in VCR mode.

I'm not sure voltage is the problem. I say that because I have a combo USB/Firewire PC card in my T22, and I capture video from my Sony DV cam (a TRV-51??) with no problem, no external power to the card.

Give us a little more information about what's going on. If I had to guess, I'd think that something is keeping the camera from being recognized as a connected device. I've had that happen to me, but always a reboot (or closing and reopening the software I'm using) has fixed the problem.

I take it you are trying to connect the camera so you can access the video from inside some program, either playing back or capturing the video stream to the HD. What program is that?

I'm puzzled about your saying you installed the Sony drivers. What drivers? I use Vegas Video to capture the video, but I've never had to install drivers, the camera is just seen as a generic DV device in Vegas (and I assume it would be the same in other video editing programs). This is my experience with both win2000 and XP.

I'll fiddle a little with this when I get home, there are a couple things I want to check out, and see if I can shed some light on it. In the meantime, post the additional information I asked for.

OK, here's what happens with my T22. With the sound enabled on my T22, I get a WinXP chime when I plug the card into the slot. Then when I plug the turned on camera into the card I get the same sound (or, if I plugged the camera into the card turned off, when I turn the camera on).

So, use the chime test to determine whether you have a card recognition problem or a camera recognition problem.

Hope this is of some help.

Thank you Nolonemo.
i hv sony hc 90 . wheni install the software which comes with it (picture package) then i see "sony drivers" in control panel--> add/remove programs.i think those are USB drivers.

what i mean by unrecognized is i dont see the icon on systemn tray when i connect via pcmcia firewire.

also when i use USB to connect it is recognized . It is only when i connect it through pcmcia firewire it is not recogniz.ed

Hope you got all the answers which you want to .Let me know if you need more information.

also i want to ask you which ver of vegas studion are u using . any idea of its performance on my laptop (PIII 1.1 ghz 750 RAM W2k OS).
also how good is this product when compared to picture package and the software which comes with sony camcorder.

I don't see an icon in the system tray when my camera is connected.

I'm using Vegas 4 on a 1GHz T22, it runs fine, but I am not loading on any real effects when I edit the video. Vegas 4 probably beats the pants off of what was bundled with your camera, but is quite expensive $400 or so?

If I were in your shoes, I would try to borrow another firewire device to see if the problem is with your card or the camera.

Sorry I can't be more helpful beyond my immediately previous post re whether Windows is indicating it detects the FW card if you insert it when the TP is already running.

Problem could be with the software. Try this easy, small and free software to capture from your digital camcorder and see if it works. http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video ... s/dvio.cfm