There are two types of firewire cables: Straight-through and crossover.
Which one is the most common and what are they for? Your guidance is
appreciated.
Interesting discussion. My browsing is showing that firewire cables
are not sold as "straight" and "crossover," but rather by connector
type. The 6-pin connector is the computer side, and the 4-pin
connector is the component side. So it would seem that if one wants
to connect PC to PC, you use a cable with two 6-pin connectors, and if
one wants to connect two peripherals together, one uses a 4-pin to
4-pin connector, etc.
Perhaps the people you are trying to buy cables from do not understand
what you want to buy because you are using the wrong terminology?
A little more digging reveals that IEEE-1394 uses a somewhat different
configuration than the Tx/Rx setup that those familiar with RS-232A
and ethernet would know, and is more akin to MIL-STD-1553. What has
driven you to believe that there are crossover IEEE-1394 cables? I'm
not saying there aren't, but I sure can't find any reference to them.
Are you using adapters that switch between 6-pin to 4-pin, or
male-to-female, that might be of non-standard construction?
http://www1.electusdistribution.com.au/images_uploaded/firewire.pdf
"NOTE that in all standard IEEE 1394 cables, the connections to the
two signal twisted pairs are transposed between the two ends. That is,
in a 6-pin to 6-pin cable pins 4 and 3 at each end connect to pins 6
and 5 at the other, respectively. Similarly in a 4-pin to 4-pin cable
pins 2 and 1 at each end connect to pins 4 and 3 at the other,
respectively."