I am submitting this tip in the hope that it will save someone a month of agony!
I recently bought a DV camcorder and PCI ieee1394 host adaptor. I checked for compatibility at the site: www.linux1394.org
If you look at the site there is a load of scary stuff about recompiling the kernel, etc, but with Mandrake 9.1 you don't need to.
This is what you need to do:
First visit the easy urpmi site (http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon) and setup you software source manager so you can load up all the programs and libraries recommended by the linux1394 site. I think you can get them all bar one. You'll definitely need libraw1394, libdc1394, testlibraw1394, gscanbus, kino, dvgrab, etc. I seem to remember that I found all of these except one via software source manager except one, I think it was libdc1394, but I found an rpm using a google search. Basically, in the "add software" icon in Mandrake Control Centre, search for 1394 and install everything, plus Kino and Dvgrab. Gscanbus is also worth having to check if everything works.
Open a terminal, and, as root, add the following lines to /etc/rc.local (hint type "kate /etc/rc.local"):
modprobe video1394
modprobe dv1394
modprobe raw1394
Due to dependencies, ieee1394 and ohci1394 or equivalent will also be loaded.
Now add these lines to /etc/modules.conf
alias /dev/raw1394* raw1394
alias /dev/dv1394* dv1394
Once saved, reboot.
Once back in KDE or gnome, open a terminal, change to root and type in:
cd /dev
mknod raw1394 c 172 0
mknod dv1394 c 172 0
(don't worry that these lines produce an error that they are already present)
chmod 666 raw1394
chmod 666 dv1394
Now programs like Kino should run and recognise the ieee1394 subsystem.