# firewire to usb2

## queen

I would like to buy a firewire to usb2 adapter. I saw on ebay that they write usb2. But I am not so sure if  such a thing can be. Firewire is usually slower than usb2.

My firewire is 

```

01:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
```

Someone knows the speed of such a controller?

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## frostschutz

1394a is about the same speed as usb2, 1394b is twice the speed of 1394a.

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## queen

 *frostschutz wrote:*   

> 1394a is about the same speed as usb2, 1394b is twice the speed of 1394a.

 

Cool, thanks. So it's around 400Mb/s. So if I buy such an adapter I should expect speeds of maximum 400Mb/s.

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## ksp7498

1394a is technically a bit slower than usb2.0 (400 megabit vs. 480 megabit), but in real world usage 1394a should end up actually being faster due to usb's shared bus nature.  usb loses a lot of bandwidth to signal arbitration and all that kind of mess.  You should be able to get closer to the maximum theoretical speed using firewire

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## queen

 *ksp7498 wrote:*   

> 1394a is technically a bit slower than usb2.0 (400 megabit vs. 480 megabit), but in real world usage 1394a should end up actually being faster due to usb's shared bus nature.  usb loses a lot of bandwidth to signal arbitration and all that kind of mess.  You should be able to get closer to the maximum theoretical speed using firewire

 

Good news. Because I had a very bad experience with usb. all my usb ports fried. I tried to connect an external hd to usb, and as a result I had a power shortage in all the house. .......... So until I will change the motherboard, I can use an adaptor firewire to usb, connect a usb hub and all the devices to the hub. 

I saw on ebay a kit for firewire to usb. Do you happen to know if they are reliable?

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## cyrillic

I have never heard of a firewire -> USB adapter, but I know that PCI -> USB cards are cheap and should do what you want.

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## frostschutz

Even if USB <-> Firewire bridges exist, I still suggest you use a proper USB controller (as a PCI card if there is no other way). I doubt you have a good chance of getting actual driver support for strange adapters in Linux. Frying the connectors is a really bad thing to happen, but it's possible... with bad cables that cause short circuits, or passive hubs that do something bad if something dries to draw too much power from it. You have to take care and only connect hardware that is known to work to your computer... otherwise you can fry Firewire in just the same fashion.

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## queen

 *frostschutz wrote:*   

> Even if USB <-> Firewire bridges exist, I still suggest you use a proper USB controller (as a PCI card if there is no other way). I doubt you have a good chance of getting actual driver support for strange adapters in Linux. Frying the connectors is a really bad thing to happen, but it's possible... with bad cables that cause short circuits, or passive hubs that do something bad if something dries to draw too much power from it. You have to take care and only connect hardware that is known to work to your computer... otherwise you can fry Firewire in just the same fashion.

 

I am trying to get a proper usb controller, but from the service they said I will need to change motherboard (laptop) which is ~600$. I am negotiating with them about the payment because I am out of warranty. ;-(

What I wanted to connect is printer, sandisk cruzer, my tv tuner hauppauge . All worked under usb. I even had an external hd which worked perfectly. This time I tried to attach another usb hd, which caused the short circuit. Next time I won't do such a foolish thing. 

Here is a link of the kit I saw on ebay:[url]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Travel-Kit-Cable-USB-To-IEEE-1394-Firewire-6-Adapters_W0QQitemZ350054857668QQihZ022QQcategoryZ41993

QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem[/url]

Otherwise I will try pci to usb until I get the motherboard fixed. 

here is my kernel configuration regarding 1394:

```

 

grep 1394 .config

# IEEE 1394 (FireWire) support

CONFIG_IEEE1394=y

# CONFIG_IEEE1394_VERBOSEDEBUG is not set

# CONFIG_IEEE1394_PCILYNX is not set

CONFIG_IEEE1394_OHCI1394=y

CONFIG_IEEE1394_VIDEO1394=y

CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2=y

# CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2_PHYS_DMA is not set

CONFIG_IEEE1394_ETH1394_ROM_ENTRY=y

CONFIG_IEEE1394_ETH1394=y

CONFIG_IEEE1394_DV1394=y

CONFIG_IEEE1394_RAWIO=y

```

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## frostschutz

Ok, in case of a laptop, things are a bit more difficult. I guess you can consider yourself lucky that it fried the USB ports only, and not the whole machine.  :Shocked: 

Regarding the adapter you posted: that's bull. there's no way this adapter can actually work. I assume the only thing it adapts is the power lines of those connectors, so you can charge a USB mobile phone / mp3 player with it, drawing power from a firewire port. The cable in the image is too thin for anything else, proper USB and Firewire cables are much thicker than this, because they require more lines, and shielding. A proper Firewire<->USB adapter would require some kind of translation, i.e. there would have to be an actual Firewire client and USB controller on the device.

If charging stuff off one of your firewire ports is all you wanted to do, that's fine I guess. But if you want to actually access your hardware, this adapter is not a solution. You need to get a proper USB controller for that, maybe your laptop has a pcmcia or similar extension slot that supports this kind of thing?

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## queen

 *frostschutz wrote:*   

> Ok, in case of a laptop, things are a bit more difficult. I guess you can consider yourself lucky that it fried the USB ports only, and not the whole machine. 
> 
> Regarding the adapter you posted: that's bull. there's no way this adapter can actually work. I assume the only thing it adapts is the power lines of those connectors, so you can charge a USB mobile phone / mp3 player with it, drawing power from a firewire port. The cable in the image is too thin for anything else, proper USB and Firewire cables are much thicker than this, because they require more lines, and shielding. A proper Firewire<->USB adapter would require some kind of translation, i.e. there would have to be an actual Firewire client and USB controller on the device.
> 
> If charging stuff off one of your firewire ports is all you wanted to do, that's fine I guess. But if you want to actually access your hardware, this adapter is not a solution. You need to get a proper USB controller for that, maybe your laptop has a pcmcia or similar extension slot that supports this kind of thing?

 

Thanks, you saved me from buying a flop. I feel lucky that it didn't fried the whole machine. I think that only the microfuse got burned. Some power still arrives to the usb, but probably not enough. 

I see the light turns on the mouse. then dims a little bit. 

I have a pci/pcmcia card (not sure if it's pci or pcmcia). Here is my lspci: 

```
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)

```

and here you can find the image of the laptop which someone also installed gentoo: [url]

http://hoo.homeunix.net/~teknohog/hardware/sigmatrix/[/url]

The guy writes  *Quote:*   

> PC Card slot	yenta_socket, pcmcia_core	pcmciatools

 

In the right place you can see something grey. That's the slot I have. If you can point me to a link on ebay what would be a good card, I will be grateful.

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## frostschutz

"This mysterious empty space in the bottom has a working USB socket  :Smile: " - is this hidden USB socket also dead?

Regarding the controller card... looks like a standard PCMCIA slot, so you could use any PCMCIA USB 2.0 controller card. I don't really have a recommendation for such a device, but I suggest you don't buy it from ebay, but just go with your laptop to any good computer store and buy it there... they should be able to sell you a controller that fits and you could try and see if it actually works and give it back if it doesn't.

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## queen

 *frostschutz wrote:*   

> "This mysterious empty space in the bottom has a working USB socket " - is this hidden USB socket also dead?
> 
> Regarding the controller card... looks like a standard PCMCIA slot, so you could use any PCMCIA USB 2.0 controller card. I don't really have a recommendation for such a device, but I suggest you don't buy it from ebay, but just go with your laptop to any good computer store and buy it there... they should be able to sell you a controller that fits and you could try and see if it actually works and give it back if it doesn't.

 

Unfortunately the hidden socket is also dead. I had great hopes that it works, so for the first time I opened it and tried, but without luck. 

I"ll follow to your advice. In a good shop I can check if it works already there. Thanks a lot.

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## queen

I went to the shop, and they will bring next week. But I wanted to ask, how do I access the usb devices? Via lsusb or there is another approach?

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