Any advice for getting FireWire 800 on my Sawtooth?

[MacFoxG4]

Hi all,

So I've been trying to add FireWire 800 to my 1.5ghz Sawtooth with little success. I have tried 2 different 64-bit PCI cards, one a generic brand FireBoard 800 and another an iogear GIC3800. Both have the same issue of having insanely slow copying speeds, with progress bars indicating that a 9 GB file would take about 22 hours to copy. It took about 10 minutes just to copy a 62 MB file. I know that both the external SSD and the FW 800 cables that I am using work, as they function just fine with my early Intel Macs. I'm stumped as to why both cards have ended up with the same issue. I couldn't find any firmware updates online for either card. Both cards have a berg connector that can be used to hook up to PSU power. I have tried both with and without connecting to PSU power and the results are the same.

Any suggestions for a FW 800 PCI card that would work on this Mac or anyone know how to fix the slow copying issue that only affects the FW 800 PCI cards?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Hi all,

So I've been trying to add FireWire 800 to my 1.5ghz Sawtooth with little success. I have tried 2 different 64-bit PCI cards, one a generic brand FireBoard 800 and another an iogear GIC3800. Both have the same issue of having insanely slow copying speeds, with progress bars indicating that a 9 GB file would take about 22 hours to copy. It took about 10 minutes just to copy a 62 MB file. I know that both the external SSD and the FW 800 cables that I am using work, as they function just fine with my early Intel Macs. I'm stumped as to why both cards have ended up with the same issue. I couldn't find any firmware updates online for either card. Both cards have a berg connector that can be used to hook up to PSU power. I have tried both with and without connecting to PSU power and the results are the same.

Any suggestions for a FW 800 PCI card that would work on this Mac or anyone know how to fix the slow copying issue that only affects the FW 800 PCI cards?

Thanks in advance.

Personally I use Belkin FireWire 800 cards in my desktop Macs and I've never experienced any issues with slow transfer rates.

My initial suspicion was that perhaps the chipsets in your cards aren't fully compatible but the Fireboard 800 appears to use the Texas Instrument chipset - like with the Belkin so I'm at a loss as to why you're experiencing problems. Likewise with the GIC3800 whose packaging explicitly states Mac compatibility and bears the image of a PowerMac on the front!

According to what's stated on the box, it's supposed to transfer 60 minutes of digital video in 2 minutes so something is very wrong here.

 

[ervus]

I have an Orange micro FW800 card that works well. I'm not sure which chipset it has, but I never had to load any extra drivers or software to use it with Mac OS X.

 

[eyoungren]

And I have a Sonnet FW400/800 card somewhere as well.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

@TheShortTimer Is your FW800 card bootable?

 

[TheShortTimer]

@TheShortTimer Is your FW800 card bootable?

I'm not sure. I did test that capability (and for the USB 2.0 card as well) but I can't remember the outcome. I'll have to set up my Sawtooth or Quicksilver and revisit this question.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I'm not sure. I did test that capability (and for the USB 2.0 card as well) but I can't remember the outcome. I'll have to set up my Sawtooth or Quicksilver and revisit this question.

Thanks man, that would be awesome. I want to put FW800 in few of my powermac g4s and would like them to be bootable.