[DM-MUG] short Firewire cables?

[Victoria L. Herring]

>Victoria,
>
>It might be a good idea to specify the type of connector's required on your
>cable.  In my work I use three different cable/connector configurations. 6
>pin to 6 pin, 4 pin to 4 pin, and 4 pin to 6 pin.
>
>[1] 6-pin Firewire/IEEE-1394 connector [to] 6-pin Firewire/IEEE-1394
>connector -- used to connect my firewire hard drives to a desktop PC.
>

Thanks much Alan.and Matthew ...I'll probably be looking for the 6 to 
6...it's not readily apparent from the 'port' but I gather from 
others here and other info,and Matt's confirmation- that'd be 
right...and I'll check out your suggestions -- from my MacLaw list 
comes the following==

At 1:26 PM -0600 12/2/05, Victoria L. Herring wrote:
>   I would gather that they're prety much the same?  IEEE1394
>6pin to 4pin male??  some are white, some are clear, etc...I assume
>color means nothing...so the only issue is length?

Actually, it makes a big difference. I've seen the effects of
inferior cabling and it ain't pretty. If you can, get the more
inflexible, non-transparent Molex cables.

  From a post a few months ago from an engineer for whom I've great
respect as a straightshooter:
=====
>I get dozens and dozens of customers who's unstable FireWire devices are
>stabilized from cable replacement.
>
>Both Molex and Belkin have told me that their cables are made to high
>specification, but so "should" other cables. The fact is, that they are
>not. Maybe other manufacturers shortcut, do not build to their published
>specifications, or whatever. the fact is, the low priced cables shipped
>with most FireWire boxes are designed and tested for single device use,
>not for daisy chaining and heavy I/O.
>
>Note the inferior iSight cable, and the many FireWire problems attributed
>to it, including data loss scenarios.
>
>In one round of serious testing VST (now Smartdisk) did with cabling, the
>transparent cables had much higher electrical noise levels. they also
>found many cables did not live up to their supposed speccifications. So
>they spent 50% more to ship these inflexible Molex cables that some
>customers complained about (wanting prettier cables!), but they worked.
>
>I will stop here. But FireWire cables can make a huge difference in
>system reliability, especially in systems with multiple drives attached,
>and you are doing heavy work transferring from one disk to another, or
>using RAID software. the first thing I do if I get a FireWire bus glitch
>is replace the cables. Amazing how often that works.
-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Attorney, Civil Rights, Discrimination & 
Employment Law, <http://www.HerringLaw.com>;  Travel research and 
planning, <http://www.JourneyZing.com>;  Des Moines, Iowa, 
515-255-4475.  Photographs now on display at Borders Books & Cafe, 
West Des Moines:  http://victoriajz.smugmug.com