Firewire devices

KarlSutton · Post by **KarlSutton** » Fri May 26, 2006 7:15 am

Hi,

I've got a few firewire devices (828mkII/002R/iSight/two external drives/sony DVMC2) I would like to add two more external drives & was wondering if I'm at the point of needing a hub or a PCI firewire card.

What is the best way to daisy chain & hook this stuff up? Any advice is appreciated!

PS-two of the external drives would only be used as backup storage.

oh yeah this is on a G5 dual 1.8

KarlSutton · Post by **KarlSutton** » Sun May 28, 2006 8:55 am

anybody have any tips for me?

belexes · Post by **belexes** » Mon May 29, 2006 11:49 am

Ive had some trouble with hubs - better to daisy chain I think...

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:25 pm

Imagine that your built-in FireWire is like a two lane road. Let's say you need to get more cars than will fit on a two lane road. So you make the road 6 lanes but at each end it is still 2 lanes. Not very effective but at least you can get the job done (most of the time). This is what a hub is like. Now let's say you add 4 lanes from point to point to your two lanes. Now things are really moving. This is what adding a FireWire PCI card is like. Not to mention that you can get a card with a power connector on it so you can power bus powered devices without having to suck power through the logic board.

Personally, I don't use the built-in FireWire for anything that gets unplugged often or while the Mac is on. Too much risk of frying the ports. I reserve this roulette game for the PCI card that can be replaced. In addition, capture/playback devices don't always play nice when they are on the same bus as a hard drive. PCI cards solve this problem too. I got a card with an internal port and routed a cable and jack to the front of my G4 for easy access.

KarlSutton · Post by **KarlSutton** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:01 pm

with the ever changing PCI slot configurations in Apple computers is there any card I can get now that might work in a future intel machine?

my current mac is a G5 dual 1.8

thanks for your post that makes great sense

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:28 pm

Sonnet's Allegro FW cards have had some good reports. Sonnet has just come out with an eSATA card that will work in both PCI and PCIx slots. I'm not sure if their FW cards are as interchangeable...

Check sonnettech.com for more info.

PCIe is going to be a different ball of wax altogether. Saving peripherals from G4/G5 for Intel Macs is a big issue with Mac users-- not always doable. It will likely be a bigger issue than the loss of SCSI (ie: Adaptec has dropped SCSI supprort for Tiger). Mac users are likely going to get hit hard for PCI/PCIx to PCIe hardware update/upgrade fees. Even MOTU charged its longstanding users something like $70 at least to swap their PCI-424 for the G5-ready versions.

This is not a happy time, but the sun also rises.

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:47 pm

Here's the best advice you'll ever get:

Stop changing hardware so much!

If it works, stop %&*@!*ing with it.