From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: December 2, 2009 10:49:58 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] CRG..OAG..iBook etc.

Hi Mark;

Firstly if you have the laptop, why are you running long cables?

Secondly, powered FireWire hubs may not provide power if there is power coming from the Mac.  None of the ones I have here provide power if the Mac / PC has power on the connector cable. The only way to force the hub to be the power source is to use a FW cable that doesn't provide power on the 6th pin.

The easiest way to do it is to buy a 6 Pin Male mail to 4 Pin female gender bender like these:

http://www.xpcgear.com/firewire4pf6pm.html

http://industrialcomponent.com/firewirestuff/fw6m4f.html

(or search Google with the words " FireWire 4 pin male female adapter ")

and then run a male 4 pin to male 6 pin firewire cable to the hub. Since there is no power coming from the Mac, the hub will supply all the power.

But before buying anything this, check to see what the hub will put out for power too. You want to be sure it can deliver the full rated spec which is up to 40 volts and 1.5 amps.

Like everything else at Apple, they don't publish specs for which models of Macs provide what for power on FireWire or USB. I know some of the early iMacs could not provide enough power to run two DFG/1394-1 devices or two FireWire cameras at the same time. Apple skimped on the amperage to save a few pennies.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle

On 2-Dec-09, at 6:41 AM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

I was going to do some experiments with the offsets of my Celestron

Radial Guider tonight & was partly set up when I realised my 10 metre

firewire cable was already in use burning something. I want to try it

with the Moon & the Scorpion CCD but have found it won`t connect

simultaneously with another camera to my small unpowered Unibrain

repeater/hub. The Flea 2 & DBK cameras will connect to this hub

together however. So what I`d have had to do is connect the Scorpion

to my iBook by 5 metre FW cable & Astro IIDC then connect my Flea 2 to

my indoors Mac Mini & Astro IIDC or (perhaps) the DBK to Metaguide &

my indoors PC by the 10 metre FW cable. The offsets can probably be

gauged by Sky Tools 3 Pro by changing the offsets for the FOV`s in

it`s camera control window (I have a setting for the two cameras

ready). My set-up with 2 copies of Astro IIDC on the same computer is

a bit foiled at present (unless perhaps I try to obtain a power

connector for the repeater) & definitely foiled by having the 10 metre

cable part way through this burning process! I finally got my new 250

GB HD drive installed on the iBook by FW targeting the iBook from the

Mac Mini & cloning the old HD info from my Lacie external HD to it

using CCC ( kindly directed to this app by Terry Redding). This was

then bootable. I`ve had a few glitches though like an installation

disc which got stuck in the inbuilt optical drive of the iBook &

couldn`t be removed due to a very tight screw on the lid of the OD &

more recently the internal speakers of the iBook have stopped working

(not the headphone socket though)..I must have dismantled & put the

iBook back together about 10 times!

Mark.