newbie with dv500

i am new to this forum and DV editing. I purchased the DV500 almost a year ago. i have tried to capture video (analog) onto the computer and have never been successful.
the device manager shows all components properly installed (No yellow question mark symbols.)
i have the following system:
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
Dual Processors: Pentium 3, 933MHz 133 MHz system bus
256 on die cache Level 2
Video Card: ATI Radeon 64 MB DDR AGP 4X 2X
Hard Drive: Matrox 60 GB 7200 RPM X 2 Slaves
Matrox 40 GB 7200 RPM x 1 Master
Ram: 256PC133 32 x 4 = 1 Gb total
Pinnacle Systems DV500 Plus V. 3.0 Small Install
Adobe Premiere V 6.0

when i hook up an analog sony EV c200 8mm deck and push play on the deck and select record under movie capture in premiere, nothing happens.

i occasionally get "no device detected" messages,

how do i troubleshoot this and begin to get video stored on my hard drive so i can begin to learn how to edit video?

thanks for the help in advance

roxylee

thank you bw, i've learned much from your link. please see new post from me with card and install into new system. don't see the card working in my present system because of hardware configuration problems with another firewire card needed to connect to firewire external hard drive. maxtor drive won't read off of pinnacle card and i need the maxtor drive to work as priority.

thank you

thank you to the Prisoner for your input, i'll investigate for solution to this capture problem

roxylee