Thunderbolt: no FW adaptors (or any for that matter) yet?

[mikehalloran]

FW800 will be a major speed bottleneck on a TB equipped Mac. We're going to be dumping our FW externals as soon as TB externals come down to reasonable prices.

If our external drive enclosures have SATA drives, an empty TB enclosure will save a bit of money, no doubt. Don't hold your breath expecting to see TB enclosures for IDE drives as the IDE/PATA architecture is so slow by comparison.

I am not talking about our interfaces which were never upgraded to FW800. TB isn't going to make that any faster - no need - but all that bandwidth can be put to other uses such as 48 or more 192kHz channels in a single interface. The math supports even more.

[macguy]

Wonder what the holdup is? Maybe Jobs didn't thunk the think when they opted for this technology.

Any clues as the why this is a problem?

Well Apple can build a hub with a monitor maybe people are just going to release at trade shows etc.
It will hit hard because it smashes the bandwidth of anything at this moment and they are raising the speed spec too so...

[mikehalloran]

>Any clues as the why this is a problem?<

The obvious one is that Intel hasn't made the chip set widely available to the aftermarket yet. They have samples so that the work can begin but no production.

[cuttime]

It will hit hard because it smashes the bandwidth of anything at this moment and they are raising the speed spec too so...

Been hearing this since last winter. It's all still vaporware at this point.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

It will hit hard because it smashes the bandwidth of anything at this moment and they are raising the speed spec too so...

Been hearing this since last winter. It's all still vaporware at this point.

And the next new scheme will be even faster!

No doubt... I guess Thunderbolt is really just something of a spark arrestor at this point.

[mikehalloran]

They get the chip sets from Intel - so far no one has production quantities. Even TB cables have chips in them. Per OWC, production quantities at reasonable aren't going to happen till 2nd generation and that isn't expected till next year.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

So waiting for a Mac Pro with TB isn't such a bad idea, I suppose? My wife will appreciate that!

[cuttime]

It's about ƒ&^#ing time:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoe ... rbolt.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This stuff's rather pricey, and it still doesn't include the TB cable, available only from Apple ($50!). I guess this one is supposed to supersede the Allegro adapter, which seems to have disappeared.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

We are such prey!

[cuttime]

More TB stuff you can't buy yet:

HERE

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'm wondering if you can ....

OK, not really wondering, stupid question and I guess the answer is no.

There will not be a Thunderbolt PCIe card for Macs that don't have the technology... will there? My 2008 8 core will never have TB capabilities I suppose since there is no TB system built in? Not the end of the world... but at the tip of the flat part, for sure.

Thanks for the update, cuttime.

[mikehalloran]

I'm wondering if you can ....

OK, not really wondering, stupid question and I guess the answer is no.

There will not be a Thunderbolt PCIe card for Macs that don't have the technology... will there? My 2008 8 core will never have TB capabilities I suppose since there is no TB system built in? Not the end of the world... but at the tip of the flat part, for sure.

Thanks for the update, cuttime.

Correct. There will be PCIe racks that connect via TB but not the other way around.