Firewire: Don’t Plug It In Backwards!
Or you’ll find out why it’s called Firewire.
That’s the chip inside a former Firewire hub.
That’s a closeup of the destroyed pin. These images were taken with the QX5 toy microscope.
You’re lucky the web doesn’t have smell-o-vision yet.
Ellen wrote:
Yikes!
Posted on 19-Nov-06 at 9:15 pm | Permalink
William wrote:
I’ve not used FireWire. Did you plug the cable in backwards? Are the connectors poorly enough designed that you can do that? Ugh!
Posted on 10-Dec-06 at 10:36 am | Permalink
Paul wrote:
The connector is designed to be keyed. It has a tombstone shape that should be impossible to plug in backwards. However, the usual implementation is sloppy and made of extremely thin sheet metal. With just a little force, it’s very possible to plug it in backwards.
I am not certain that’s what I did, but it seems likely. I was rewiring things, working under the bench where I couldn’t really see what I was doing. There was a ty-wrap in the way and I might have applied excess force to push the ty-wrap aside.
Posted on 10-Dec-06 at 11:27 am | Permalink