[X4U] iSight Camera And Other FireWire Devices

[Mark Gibson]

At 06:29 -0800 18/2/05, revDAVE wrote:
>A while back I heard the disturbing news about using an iSight FireWire
>camera along with other external FireWire drives. It said that using the
>iSight camera could actually damage other external FireWire drives - YOUCH!
>
>  - So basically I stopped using my iSight camera ever since that time.
>
>-  has anyone else found this to be true?
>
>-   have there ever been any updates that fix this issue?
>
>- Can anyone point me to any actual information that either confirms or
>denies this issue?
>
>--
>Thanks - RevDave
>CoolCat at hostalive.com
>[db-lists]

RevDave,

Here is what I posted to this list on this subject in July 2003:

>Hi,
>
>Don't know if TAC has a solution yet but this is on the Apple 
>discussion list and its bit me too.
>
>I had my iSight "daisy chained" via an external (powered Iceberg) 
>FireWire drive.
>
>My PB G4 (1Ghz / 1GB, 10.2.6) was running a little low on free space 
>(512Mb free) when suddenly the FireWire drive disappeared off the 
>Desktop accompanied by the warning about it not being correctly 
>removed. I didn't drag its icon to the trash, nor did the drive's 
>power supply fluctuate. (Other posters to the Apple Discussion list 
>didn't mention low free disk space on the internal drive.)
>
>When I rebooted, OS X politely told me that the drive was unreadable 
>and did I want to initialize it.
>
>Anyway I now have a very sad drive (Disk Warrior 3 can't see it, 
>Disk Utility can see it but can't fix it and Norton's System Works 2 
>and 3 don't get anywhere either). I tried getting to it via OS 9 
>(who said a dual boot machine was no good) but no joy.
>
>I've dropped the drive off to get a quote on data recovery.
>
>Anyway I don't know if its a coincidence or if iSight doesn't like 
>to share FireWire connections.
>
>Given the the drive had its own power supply I'm not sure if a 
>FireWire hub would improve things (besides its another mess of 
>cables on the desk).
>
>Maybe iSight 2 needs a separate power supply (or to daisy chain off 
>the PB's AC adapter)?

This is what one of my technical contacts at Apple suggested (no 
admission of guilt etc.):

>You'll probably find that the problem is caused by the iSight's 
>power requirements. As far as I know, it needs to be connected 
>directly to  Mac in order to obtain enough voltage to work properly. 
>Chances are what has happened is that because the iSight was being 
>daisy-chained off the icecube, it was trying to obtain power from 
>the icecube case, therefore putting too much load in the case. If 
>there are enough firewire ports available, try connecting the isight 
>directly to the Mac, failing that, try a powered firewire hub.

There was much discussion on the Apple Boards about it at the time.

I recovered the data and always use a powered FireWire hub with my 
iSight if I ever want to use another FireWire device on my 
PowerBook's single port.

As far as I know there has never been a patch for this issue (unless 
it was part of the iSight UPdate 1.0.2 rolled out in February, 2004).
-- 

Regards,

Mark (}-:
+61 (0)4 1927 7198
Skype / AIM / iChat: gibsonm1

The Horse, the Saddle, the Man