iPod Using iPods with 4-pin Firewire

ftaok said:

Hi y'all,

I was thinking about picking up an new iPod mini for my wife and was wondering if they are compatible with 4-pin Firewire. My wife's Dell has a 4-pin port, but no 6-pin. This wouldn't be a problem if she had USB2, but she don't.

Anyone have an iPod working with 4-pin FW?

ftaok

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my 3G 20gig came with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter plug. i'd imagine that would be fine. however remember that most iPods do not come with firewire anymore, which means you'll need to buy that firewire cable separate. At least double check to make sure you know what is in the box, then order accordingly, the cable may not include the 6-to-4 pin adapter either, so that could be extra as well. just check before you order expecting to find a firewire cable in the box.

If you use an adapter, this should work fine for tansfers. 4-pin firewire will not however charge the ipod.

USB 1.1

ahhh!

it would take absolutely forever to transfer over a 1.1 connection...

For the price of a good firewire cable and adapter, you could probably pick up a USB2 PCMCIA card.

CompUSA has a FW/USB2 combo PC card for $80.

its probably already been said but 4-pin Firewire does not charge the 'pod.

huge pain back when i had my laptop with 4 pin and i tried looking for a few songs on my iPod using XP's search. because of the speed of the pods HD and the fact it was spun up for so long the battery was almost dead.

copying music across kills it too. just be nice to it

The 6 pin to 4 pin used to come with iPods, I have one. They're probably $5 at a place like CompUSA.

My 4G 20GB came with a 6pin cable and USB 2 cable, no adapter anymore, if your wife's Dell is a desktop it might just be easiest to add a USB 2 or combo PCI card in it. Thoes are pretty cheap now and them you can charge the iPod through one cable. I use the Combo card in my work PC to charge my iPod if I forget to plug it in at home.

Neither 4-pin FW nor USB 1.1 will charge...

Yup. In order to charge an iPod, you either need 6-pin FireWire or USB 2.0. So if you buy a new iPod, you'll need to get a charging adaptor, in addition to the FireWire cable. I'd recommend getting the FireWire cable, 4-pin-to-6-pin adaptor, and FireWire wall brick charger.

The technical issue is that USB 1.1 is limited to 500mA of current per port, which isn't even enough to charge the mini. USB 2.0 can provide more power per port (don't know the exact limit, but it's at least 1A,) which can charge it. 4-pin FireWire is missing 2 pins for one simple reason: It doesn't have the power pins.

I have a 2.5" bus-powered USB hard drive case that uses an interesting method to get around USB 1.1's lack of power. If you are plugging it into a USB 2.0 port, it gets enough power to run just fine. But if you want to plug it into a USB 1.1 computer, you have to use the (included) Y-adaptor. It draws power only from one USB port, and both draws power, and makes the data connection, from a second. (The power-only plug is also a data pass-through, so you can have another device plugged in as well.) It's an interesting compromise for running a high-power device on a low-power USB 1.1 computer. Too bad Apple doesn't use such a method. (It is a good geek compromise, but I guess it is a bit cumbersome for the average Joe.)

I think it sucks that Apple is removing FireWire as a standard interface from the iPods. With the shuffle, it makes sense. But not for the rest of the line. I suppose the iPod is moving from 'Apple cool' to 'commodity MP3 player', so Apple's got to maximize profits any way they can.

ftaok said:

That's good info. I guess this $250 iPod mini is quickly becoming a $300 gift. Well, at least the engraving is free.

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LOL my friend has engraving - you cant see it if you have the iPod mini clip lol

AND it wasn't free - it was like thirty bucks

ftaok said:

It's free right now at Apple's site. Not sure when it'll stop being free, though.

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I wouldn't be surprised if they stopped soon. Ever since all the Windoze users have been flocking, we've noticed a slight (case w/ 40GB 2.5G iPod) and now sudden (40GB 2.5 iPod, Firewire across the line, cases across the line, gold iPod mini, 40GB iPod photo, etc.) sudden drop in add-ins. I'm surpised they aren't charging for d/l of iTunes, iPod as harddrive use, and use with their own computer systems.