How can I determine if the ieee 1394 port on my Toshiba A215-S4807 laptop is 4-pin or 6-pin

Product Summary

4-pin to 4-pin IEEE 1394 iLink FireWire Cable dv out to laptop Connect and transfer home movie from your digital camcorder to Notebook computer.

You will need a Firewire port on your computer, also known as a DV port or IEEE 1394, to use this cable. This is NOT a USB cable.

This DV cable will connect your laptop (notebook)
NOTE: for some models, becuase of no DV jack on the body, this cable connects to docking station/cradle instead of connecting directly to your camcorder.

You require a firewire cable to connect to the PC then use Movie Maker to capture the footage.
Cameras use a 4 pin socket and computers can use 4, 6, or 9 pin sockets.
Determine which socket is on the trget computer and buy the necessary cable.
FYI: Most Laptops use 4 pin and most Desktops use 6 pin. Avoid adapters if possible.

For example; if your Desktop computer has a 6 pin socket you buy a 4 to 6 pin firewire cable. Firewire is also called iLink or IEEE 1394.

On page 230 of the user manual, it describes how to transfer movies from the camera to a computer using an i.Link (IEEE 1394) cable. You will need the 4 pin i.Link cable and an IEEE 1394 connector on your computer in order to do this. You cannot use the USB cable to transfer the video from this camcorder -- you can only transfer still images using the USB cable.
You will have to buy this i.Link cable and (if you don't have a IEEE 1394 port on your computer) a IEEE 1394 adapter card for you desktop computer. If your laptop computer doesn't have a IEEE 1394 adapter, then you're pretty much out of luck.
Once you have the i.Link and 1394 issues resolved, then Movie Maker should then recognize the camera.

Flip the laptop over and look for a screw about 4" in from the face of the drive. somewhere towards the middle of the face. Pull this screw, eject the tray and give a sharp tug to the tray and it should slide out. If it doesn't do not continue to force it.

YOu can reset bios password with 2 method.
(1) open back cover of laptop then find motherbord .Pull cmos cell from motherbord for 15 minutes then again put it in it's position .then it not ask for password.
(2)You can clear password with jumper settings find jumper on motherbord named clear cmos it has 3 pin .1-2-3
Put jumper in 2-3 position then again put it in 1-2 position then check .
Let me know if you need more assistance.
Thanks.

Here is the service guide to your laptop, it has all the disassembly instructions.

http://tim.id.au/laptops/toshiba/satellite%20a200.pdf

Depending on the model, yes it does have a firewire port. The firewire port is also known as a IEEE-1394 connection. There are 2 possible layouts for this port, 6 pin and 4 pin. Below is a link to an image that shows what the 2 different ports look like. The larger 1 is a 6 pin and the small is 4 pin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireWire-46_Diagram.svg

Hope this helps.

Yes, the brandnames Firewire (Apple) and iLink (Sony) are both IEEE 1394 interfaces.
Your cam should require a 4-pin to a 6-pin, both IEEE 1394. Hope this helps.

You can use almost any laptop cd rom, cd/rw, cd/rw-dvd rom, dvd rom, or dvd/rw that you can find. You might have to transfer the mounting pieces from the old to the new, but that is no big deal.

Should be able to find a used one for in the $20 to $30 range.

It should work. Laptops have a 4pin connection. There is a video on how to specifically connect digital cameras to laptops using 4pin to 4 pin IEEE 1394 cable. So it should work... The video is on www.HandBookLive.com under Electronics category. It doesn't cover the software because all softwares would be different, but you can see that it uses 4 pin to 4 pin. You can double check on this site though.