Lattitude E6510 USB to Firewire adapter

In addition to the above, if you truly do need FireWire 400, then since the Latitude E6510 has an ExpressCard slot, the proper way to add FireWire would be to install an actual FireWire controller into that slot. The StarTech EC13942 is one such option, and StarTech is a very reputable brand if you’ve never heard of them. They also have a FireWire 800 ExpressCard controller, but FireWire 800 (1394b) uses a different port design from 400 (1394a). There are 1394a to 1394b adapters available if you’d like to have FireWire 800 for some other reason and still use this printer, but otherwise you may as well save the cash and get the FireWire 400 version.

To my knowledge there’s no such thing as a FireWire to USB adapter because those protocols work very differently from each other. USB is a master/slave architecture, whereas FireWire is peer-to-peer. At the very least you’d need an adapter that had an active chip inside it, and even then I’d wonder about compatibility. However, I’ve never heard of a printer that has FireWire either, much less one that ONLY has FireWire. The simple reasons are that a) FireWire is very rare on PCs compared to USB, which would severely limit the printer’s usability on the market, and b) FireWire was used over USB when additional bandwidth is required (especially since FireWire arrived before USB 2.0), but USB can send data FAR faster than a printer can physically print it, so I can’t see FireWire delivering any benefit on a printer.

Are you absolutely certain that the port you’re looking at on the printer is FireWire? Can you share the printer model and/or a picture of this port?

Yep, no such thing as a Firewire to USB adapter.

Back in the days when there were camcorders that had Firewire ports, many searched for such a thing.

They found them on eBay, but those adapters had the Firewire connector on one end and a USB adapter on the other end with the 5V and GND signals connected.  LOL.  Essentially creating a power cable. LOL.

It certainly wasn't going to let a Firewire device work with a PC. LOL.

But those eBay sellers scammed many people.

Never heard of a printer with a Firewire port.

I would need photographic proof.

.

@nyc10036those adapters sound dangerous given that USB is 5V but FireWire uses 12V....

Yeah.

People were desperate for this "miracle" cable.

I just took a look. They are still being sold on eBay. 

Scam reviews from people claiming they worked.

Thanks for all the replies.

It is indeed a firewire 1394A and the only connection options are the firewire and the ethernet port.  The literature lists the USB port as an option install.

This is an HP 4500PS wide format printer.  I've had one of these before and had the same connection issues.  They're made to do production printing and are usually networked.

I found my Dell laptop does have a 1394 port on it so I have a firewire cable coming that I'll try next.  I'll have to look up the Dell specs to see if it's an "A" or "B" port.

For the curious, here's a link to the HP User Manual for the printer.  I've scoured the printer to try to find a USB port but can't and the front panel says it's not installed. https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-designjet-4500-printer-series/1143083/product-info

I don't have permission to install images so you'll have to settle for a link. 

Thanks again!

Found the part number and a price for the USB connector card:

https://www.servers4less.com/printers/misc/hp-q5680a

Refurbished price is $492.00

HP lists it as a $500 option.

Crazy!

Not certain there's anything that would be a suitable substitute or if it's HP specific hardware.  Nothing on Ebay.  Even parts suppliers who have them are asking around $400-500.

Going to just try an ethernet cross over cable instead.

@D Hook  one more thing I forgot to mention.  With respect to the 1394 port built into your system, the overwhelming likelihood is that it is a 1394a (FireWire 400) port, not 1394b (FireWire 800).  The latter was used almost exclusively on Apple systems and peripherals designed to work with them.  HOWEVER, as you already found there are 4-pin and 6-pin versions of the 1394a/FireWire 400 connector.  The 4-pin version is sometimes called "mini-FireWire".  There are cables with a 4-pin connector on one end and a 6-pin on the other if that's what you need.

@D Hook  very interesting!  Fyi on the Ethernet crossover cable method, if both the system and printer have Gigabit Ethernet, you don't need a specific crossover cable because the Gigabit standard includes automatic MDI/MDI-X sensing.  That means that if you direct connect two devices with a standard cable, they will sense that and one side of the connection will switch their own port around to make that work, rather than you having to get a special crossover cable.  However, Ethernet is not quite as plug and play like USB or FireWire.  It MAY work out of the box if both your device and printer are currently set to DHCP and therefore they both use randomly chosen 169.254 IP addresses when they don't find a DHCP server on the "network".  If not, you'll need to configure static IP addresses on both the printer and your PC in order to make it work, but that might be inconvenient if you ever use your PC's Ethernet connection on actual networks where DHCP is being used.  In that case, you'll have to keep switching the Ethernet configuration on your PC back and forth.