Hello community,

This is a wide-spread problem, but I have already invested 3 weeks in researching and trying all solutions so maybe somebody will give me a fresh idea.

I have:
a ) Sony DCR TRV22E PAL miniDV camcorder
b ) Good firewire cables (4-4 and 4-6) - I tested them with other cameras.

Tried connecting my camera to the following fresh installs:
a ) PC WinXP SP2;
a.i) PC WinXP SP2 with 1394 drivers reverted to SP1.
b ) PC WinXP SP1a;
c ) PC WinXP no service packs;
d ) PC Win2000 no service packs;
e ) PC Linux Ubuntu;
f ) Apple G5 MacOSX

All of the machines don't recognize that the camera gets connected (no "dunk" sound, not listed in device list, etc).

If it's relevant - all XP machines I set up had Asus motherboards (P4WDH and some other old board with a QC-stamp from 2004). Also tried xpsp2 on Vaio laptop.

I also tried connecting my camera as the Apple G5 hard-drive - the computer processed it for a while and reported that the hard-drive failed to get connected (the camera is not a hard-drive anyway).

Every time I would connect my camera to a computer via firewire the "DV IN" indicator will light up on display. Once again, the cables are fine because other NTSC cameras work over them well with the computers I tried. Software issue should probably be eliminated as well since it wouldn't even work with stock XP or 2000, when I remember for sure it worked with them in Ukraine.

I remember that about 9 months ago I successfully connected my camera to Windows XP (most likely SP2) and about two years ago it successfully worked with Windows 2000.

My assumption would be that something is wrong with the firewire output on the camera, but "DV IN" indicator successfully lights up and it would also start interacting with Apple computer when connected as a hard-drive (even if it's not supposed to)...

How can I test that the camera has a working or broken firewire output?
Maybe there are any other ideas I should try?
I have a Firewire800 PCI card, but don't have a 9-4 dual-firewire cable to connect my camera to it - is it worth buying to try?
Maybe there's somebody who lives in Seattle/Bellevue, WA area who has a working PAL miniDV video-camera that we could use to download my miniDV content?

Thank you in advance for help and ideas,
- Vitaliy

P.S.: you can also contact me by e-mail vgenkin-preventspam-GmailDotCom.