Testing Camcorder Firewire Connection

[wacole]

I have a Samsung SCD27 mini-DV camcorder that has stopped talking to my firewire port. My computer is W2K SP4, cpu 2.4 ghz, and the graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce FX5700LE w/128mb. I have 512 mb RAM.

I've done the following:

* Installed a second firewire card to make sure my existing on-board firewire port wasn't fried. The device manager says all is working as it should.
* Replaced the firewire cable that I was using.
* Reinstalled my Pinnacle Studio 9 capture/editing software.

None of these yielded any results.

Before I spend $160 to send the unit back to Samsung for repair, I'd like to find an alternative for testing the firewire connection. Right now the only software I have that talks firewire is my Pinnacle editing software [which doesn't see the camcorder even though it use to last month.] I would appreciate any suggestions for a testing tool that would confirm that my camcorder's dv port is dead [or, happily, not]. I suspect worn/misaligned contacts on the camcorder's firewire connector, but you never know.

Thanks very much.

Bill Cole

[JohnnyMalaria]

Do you have access to another miniDV camcorder that you can test?

If so, hook it up to the PC and see if it is recognized and, separately, connect the two camcorder's together and see if one can see the other's output.

[wacole]

Unfortunatly I don't have access to another DV camcorder, though that would be a great solution. Thanks.