Customer Reviews

Dynex Firewire 800 Expresscard Adaptor

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I thought I'd let you know that I found a solution to your problem. Stop by Radio Shack and get an AC to DC power adapter, item #273-1774 and also pick up the end that connects to the adapter and fits in the card. That part is also at Radio Shack adaptaplug tip "H", item number 273-340 and make sure you put the tip on the correct way on the adapter because of the polarity issue. Once it's connected correctly, plug your card into the PC, plug the AC adapter with end attached to the card's DC power connection and the card works like a million bucks! Total cost: $23 and some change. It's a shame Dynex should include a power cord but they don't, nor do they have one listed on their website. I was able to transfer 4.6 GB of photos in under 4 minutes. Same batch of photos on the same cord, last night took over 45 minutes on a USB CF card reader. This was a great solution although it took a little leg work and a few extra bucks to get it done! It's well worth the additional investment though.

As noted by other reviewers, this device does not seem to work properly. I have a i5 processor windows 7 64 bit system laptop that is 1 month old, and it did not come with a firewire connection. I bought the Dynex card and tried it. The card is properly recognized by the computer, but when I connected my Song Camcorder through the firewire cable, it did not recognize the camcorder. I took it back to BestBuy (Dynex is a BestBuy house brand so I wonder how this is being sold through Amazon) and tried a 2nd card with the same results. To be sure, I connected the camcorder with the same cord to my desktop, and it was immediately noted and worked fine. So clearly the card has a problem.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. The laptop does not have a firewire or DVI port but it does have an express card slot. I purchased the Dynex Firewire card with reservations; I've read the reviews/commentary. Being a tinkerer I decided to get one cheap from another site that shall remain nameless. I wanted to share how I got my card to recognize my Sony Handycam DCR-HC26 without the use of an AC adapter (the ac adapter didn't work for my setup) and using the 1394a (400 transfer) slot. I also believe that this card has some technical issues with most Sony camcorders; just my opinion.

Here are my steps:

1. Insert card in express card slot - software/driver will be loaded automatically.
2. Change the installed driver to LEGACY and reboot your system. This may be enough for some people for their device to run. To change to the legacy driver:
a. Go to device manager
b. Find the 1394 controller and right click to update driver
c. Select to browse your computer for driver software
d. Then select "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
e. This is where you're given the list that includes the LEGACY driver - select and then reboot your system.
3. After reboot attach your camera to the card using the firewire 1394a slot.
4. Turn on your camera giving the card/computer about 30 seconds to recognize the camcorder. At this point my computer DID NOT
recognize my device.
5. If your camcorder is not recognized, remove the firewire cable from the camcorder leaving the other end in the card slot.
6. Attach a USB cord (if your device has a USB port) to an available USB slot on your computer and then to the USB port on your camcorder.
7. Now, with the USB cable connected to you computer and device, reinsert the firewire/dvi cable to the port on your camcorder (camcorder should be on).
Give the computer time to recognize your device but it should be visible in Windows within a few seconds depending on your system.
This might not work for your setup but it has worked for me consistently. Hope this helps someone else.

After you manage to get this working with your device the card does as it's supposed to do. I would rate it higher IF Dynex provided some sort of support or information regarding functionality.

This item quit 3 days after I installed it. Used it to run my audio station and started making high pitched squealing after 3 days!!

Item worked as described. I'm using it to transfer video from a Sony TRV-820 cam to my firewire-less (surprise to me) Sony laptop. Item was less than half of cost of what brick nmortar retailers where asking.

I was a little worried about some of the negative reviews, but when the card arrived I plugged it in and my Windows 7 laptop automatically installed the required driver. I then plugged in my video camera to the firewire-400 port and again Windows 7 automatically installed the driver and then opened up a video import wizard.

So within 5 minutes of receiving the card I was successfully transferring video to my laptop. For reference, my laptop is a Dell Lattitude E6420 (purchased around July 2011) running Windows 7 32-bit. My video camera is an older Samsung Mini-DV type camera (Samsung dv381 or something like that from what I recall).

System recognizes the card, but it doesn't work with anything I've plugged into it... I even attached a power supply as well.

I purchased this card to connect a Canon ZR400 camcorder to my Toshiba A505 laptop running the 64 bit version of Windows 7. The card was recognized automatically and showed to be a correctly functioning device in device manager. However, the camera was not recognized. I had read the reviews in which others had a similar problem and noted the one about the otional power supply being the solution. I had the correct power supply from another piece of equipment and hooked it up. However, that did not solve the problem. (Although another reviewer suggested it did for him, in retrospect it doesn't make sense, because the camera doesn't need power--it has it's own.) At any rate, I took the computer, camera and card to Best Buy, since I had purchased the card there, and their Geek Squad tried and couldn't make it work either. So they went to the shelf and got a replacement card. Same thing. I got my money back and ordered a StarTech card (2 Port Firewire Expresscard EC13942) instead through Amazon and it installed automotically, the camera was recognized automitically, and it functions perfectly. The camera has been recognized automatically by Skype and by megameeting video-conferencing software. It is everything the Dynex card was not. The Dynex card may be cheaper, but it is obviously a hit and mis operation as to whether it will recognize the attachments you want to use.

I bought this for my HP laptop which doesn't have a FireWire port. The laptop is a dual-core, Vista laptop, so it's definitely capable of using the card. Although Vista detected the Dynex card itself and correctly installed all of the drivers, *none* of the devices that I attached were detected.

I connected two different DV camcorders and an external FireWire drive. All of these units operated under their own power and (according to the Dynex manual) therefore did not need the additional 12V power supply for the card. None of them were passed through to the operating system even though Vista correctly recognized the card itself.

What's worse, e-mails to Dynex requesting assistance were sent without a single response.

It's nice that other reviewers had good or decent luck with their cards. Unfortunately, I can only review on what happened to me, which tells me to recommend that you stay away from this item especially when the company doesn't respond to their e-mails.

This does not work with professional Audio Cards in XP using a Dell Inspiron with a Ricoh chipset; it does though work flawlessly on an HP running Vista 32/64 and an AMD chipset. It does work with consumer video cameras and hard drives using both set-ups. If your device is powered by the Firewire port, you will need to add power to the card because the ExpressCard port does not supply power.