Hardware: Help Getting Firewire IEEE1394 Card Working

Help
3

I have been able to get this working. It seems to be a hotplug issue in my case.

First, I needed the following in my configuration:

boot.kernelModules = [ "firewire_ohci" ];
boot.initrd.luks.mitigateDMAAttacks = false;

It may be possible to use just firewire_core instead, and it may be possible to leave the DMAA mitigation in place and use modprobe (as intended), but I haven’t tested this.

Next, I needed to do the following:

  1. Shut everything down. Computer off; camcorder off.
  2. Fully kill power to the computer. Flip the power supply switch or unplug the system, then hold the power button for 15 seconds to drain the capacitors. PCI cards don’t fully lose power otherwise—I had flaky results not doing this.
  3. Ensure the camcorder is connected to the computer, then turn on the camcorder.
  4. Reconnect power to the computer.
  5. Boot the computer.

This seems to continue functioning, as long as I don’t disconnect or turn off the camcorder.