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Per IEEE 1394 clause 8.4.2.3, a contender for the IRM role shall check
whether the current IRM complies to 1394a-2000 or later.  If not force a
compliant node (e.g. itself) to become IRM.  This was implemented in the
older ieee1394 driver but not yet in firewire-core.

An older Sony camcorder (Sony DCR-TRV25) which implements 1394-1995 IRM
but neither 1394a-2000 IRM nor BM was now found to cause an
interoperability bug:
  - Camcorder becomes root node when plugged in, hence gets IRM role.
  - firewire-core successfully contends for BM role, proceeds to perform
    gap count optimization and resets the bus.
  - Sony camcorder ignores presence of a BM (against the spec, this is
    a firmware bug), performs its idea of gap count optimization and
    resets the bus.
  - Preceding two steps are repeated endlessly, bus never settles,
    regular I/O is practically impossible.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.firewire...