FireWire status

[salmankhilji]

I have a firewire card from www.siig.com (Model #: NN2614 --- 1394 Home DV Kit). Windows ME did not recognize this card---eventhough the manufacturer claims that the driver is included in Windows and, therefore, no driver for Windows ME is available for download from their website.

SuSE 8.0 Professional with kernel 2.4.18 works with this card out-of-box without any kind of configuration.

Today I wiped out my harddrive---deleteing both Linux and Windows ME and installed Windows XP. Windows XP didn't recognize the card either. There is no Linux on my machine right now.

I intend to install FC3 on my system after it comes out. So it is mandatory that this card works with at least FC3. I read somewhere that the FireWire support in kernel 2.6 is broken. Is it true about the kernel that will eventually get shipped with FC3? From www.linux1394.org, I get the following:

"Subversion trunk is for kernel 2.6 ONLY. This code is presently less dependable than that in kernel 2.4. Use the linux-2.4 branch for the latest code on kernel 2.4."

So I suppose one is better off with kernel 2.4 for Firewire? Will FC3 finally ship with a 2.4 as an alternative?

Salman

[cybrjackle]

I use an ipod that is connected through firewire on fc2/rawhide so I'm not sure how broke it is in 2.6. YMMV I guess.

[CrystalCowboy]

FireWire support was buggy, and therefore modules not built in the kernel initially shipped with FC2in spring 2004 , 2.6.5-1.358. It has since been fixed and FireWire support is good in the current FC2 kernel, 2.6.8-1.521 (although see warnings about use of cdrecord with this kernel)

Sooo, I assume the kernel that ships with FC3 will have good FireWire support.

[taylor65]

I used firewire with FC1 and use it now with FC2 (2.6.5-1.358) - it works fine. The only problem is that it's not enabled by default due to kudzu issues and you need to add 3 lines to your /etc/rc.local file (or just type in the 3 lines). Do a search on this site and you'll find the 3 lines.

[CrystalCowboy]

I have one machine with a Via VT6307 chip handling FireWire, and it is apparently not recognized under kernel 2.6.8-1.521. Otherwise FireWire is working just dandy on other hardware for me under the same version.

[jg167]

I have one machine with a Via VT6307 chip handling FireWire, and it is apparently not recognized under kernel 2.6.8-1.521. Otherwise FireWire is working just dandy on other hardware for me under the same version. I'd like some more detail on this issue. I am trying to get my iSight camera to be usable with the onboard firewire provided on VIA EPIA MII-10000 mini-itx board which also uses the VIA VT6307S. It can recognize a maxtor firewire drive with no problems, but the camera gets timeout errors when attempting to read the configrom. The camera works fine on another linux box but also with ohter firewire cards. This is all on a a 2.6.8.1 kernel. The error comes back to the 1394 core as a timeout, but I not so sure that is what is really happeneing as there are also "unsolicited repsonses", and doubling the timeout did not change anything. So any more info that you have would be apreciated.

Testing a no-name card using the VIA VT6306 chip produced exactly the same results with iSight on my MII-10000 (timeouts when reading the config rom leading to not recognizing the device at all), but this same card running the same 2.6.8.1 kernel works fine on my Dell 4600 (P4). So this indicates that the issue is an issue with how the core 1394 modules run on the MII-10000 / eden C3 processor. This is actually good since there is a shot at fixing it.

update: a couple of weeks ago (I forgot about this post) I found that my problem was due to a less well shielded cable. The cable in question was one of the retractable type used for laptop-travelers and was very convienent for my space limited application. It worked fine on other systems (i.e. i did think of this before) but not in the noiser (wrt RFI) environment of my mini-itx based robot. Moving to the cable that came with the Apple iSight (still quite small and flexible compared to the regular sort of 1394 cable) fixed the problem.

[peterskm]

I used firewire with FC1 and use it now with FC2 (2.6.5-1.358) - it works fine. The only problem is that it's not enabled by default due to kudzu issues and you need to add 3 lines to your /etc/rc.local file (or just type in the 3 lines). Do a search on this site and you'll find the 3 lines.

The lines needed in /etc/rc.local are:

/sbin/modprobe raw1394
/sbin/modprobe ohci1394
/sbin/modprobe video1394