Re: Connect-Disconnect Firewire interface "hot"?

audioaesthetic@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Mike,
here you go again,
spreading word of mouth stories about firewire implementation
problems
with manufacturers who do not do the customer right by building honest
products.

Well, you've suggest yourself that much of the information available to us is word-of-mouth, or word-of-forum which is worse because it doesn't go away quickly if it's incorrect. The standard says "hot-pluggable" or, if it doesn't exactly say it, at least suggests it strongly enough so that it's an advertised feature. And now it seems that manufacturers on both ends of the cable are saying that it doesn't work that way. That suggests that one or the other isn't complying with the standard. But has the standard been modified? Should equipment that doesn't comply be not allowed to use the "Firewire" or IEEE-1394" labels? Perhaps we need a new interface designation that's protocol-compatible with Firewire (or at least to a defined extent) but is NOT hot pluggable?

The problem with firewire is not the standard, it is the manufacturers
who are more concerned with making the biggest buck then building a
quality product.

In that case it's the problem with whoever maintains the standard, for allowing the implication that equipment meets the standard when it does not. Powering is something which can be easily designed - it's hardware. But perhaps, as you suggest, manufacturers are saving a few pennies by eliminating components that limit inrush current or transient protection. If the standard doesn't require that, then manufacturers can get away with eliminating it - and also eliminating one feature described by the standard. Apparently now at least a couple of them are coming clean about this.

But how many customers read the instructions before plugging in cables? Standards that protect us from our own carelessness are sometimes a good idea, even if it costs more. Think of how much cheaper your car would be if it didn't have brakes - people can drive without brakes (or at least some try, when their brakes fail), but I wouldn't like it to become the way cars are built.

and M audio says outright that their implementation does not allow hot
swapping.
that they have chosen to not follow the full firewire spec because it
would cost them more money so they compromised and said so!! At least
they are honest about it!!!

I think it's not a matter of being honest, it's a disclaimer that their lawyers recommended, probably based on too many units being returned for warranty repair. The first couple of generations of Mackie mixers were blowing out the front end of the mic preamp because people were hot-plugging microphones with phantom power switched on. They can't help what happens to the microphones (though few are really damaged by this because they ARE current-limited by the mixer's power supply) but being (at the time) a company dedicated to good customer service and generously extending warranties for failed components, they got tired of fixing mixers for free.

The VLZ-Pro series had clamping diodes on the mic input lines to prevent voltage spikes from reaching a level that would damage the transistors. It probably adds about a dime per channel, but the users no longer had a problem and the manufacturer no longer had too many warranty repairs that they probably could have weaseled out of but chose to support the customer. Unfortunately, the solution to their Firewire incompatibility on some systems apparently doesn't have as straightforward a solution as the phantom power transient, and it isn't as easily tested and verified.




--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers (mriv...@xxxxxxxxxxx)
.

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