Jenoptik Firewire Card

[ScottV]

Hi,

scan.co.uk are advertising a Jenoptik Firewire card for £29 + VAT. They claim it works with Digital Camcorders but when I search for Jenoptik all I get is articles on Digital Stills Cameras.

I already have MSP 6.0 that came with my Pyro card so the software bundle is not a problem.

Does anybody have any experience with this extremely cheap Firewire card. How standard is the 1394 standard, i.e. will it just work as I expect?

Thanks.

[wkulecz]

Never heard of Jenoptik here in the USA, but if its based on the TI firewire chip should be no problem as the drivers supplied by Microsoft with win98SE and windows 2000 work well. If its based on the NEC firewire chip, Jenoptik's ability to supply correctly working drivers will then make all the difference to determine if its bargin or boondoggle.

Very very few "noname" clone vendors can supply decent drivers. Ones that do won't remain "noname" for long. Unfortunately several "bigname" companies can't supply working drivers either so IMHO it pays to do your homework and buy stuff that works correcly with the generic Microsoft drivers.

I have a NEC chip firewire card form Orange Micro and it didn't work right until I installed drivers from Orange Micro -- the NEC drivers built into windows 2000 did not work.

--wally.

[Dave Lawton]

I believe the Jenoptik card is from Germany.
I bought one a couple of days ago from Scan in the UK but haven't had time to try it.

Scan (www.scan.co.uk)have a picture of the card on their 'today only' section

AS it comes with software and a lead it seemed a good buy. I can tell you that the installation instructions say 98 or 2000 will detect the card and load the drivers.

Dave

[ScottV]

Thanks for the info.

Please let me know how you get on with it. It sounds like it uses the standard M$ drivers from what you are saying.

Scan's "today only" offers appear about once a week so I can order one any time.

[wkulecz]

Problem is windows 2000 detected and installed drivers for my NEC based Orange Micro card just fine, but these drivers didn't work right! Installing drivers supplied by Orange Micro fixed the problems.

IMHO, you really want a TI firewire chip on a generic card from a company that likely does not have the resources to write drivers.

--wally.