Connecting Firewire 800 drive to USB C

[PaulD-UK]

As others have said earlier:
Apple's 'official' way of doing this is not simple but it WILL work...

Mac Studio TB port to Apple TB3<>TB2 adapter
to Apple TB2>Firewire 800 adapter
to FW800 to FW 400 '4-pin plug' cable
to Camera iLink socket.

All these items are usually available on eBay.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Thunderbolt 3 adapter $46 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter to Firewire $29

 

[chrfr]

Sorry to bring up an old thread but I am thinking of moving to a MacStudio. Is there a way to connect a firewire video camera to the Studio? At the moment I am using a Mid-2011 iMac but not must works with 10.13 any more and I need to upograde but I still have a need to Firewire camera support. Any ideas?

You'd still need to use the Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter, and the Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter (which is now apparently discontinued), then whatever cables or adapters you need to connect to your camera from Firewire 800. OK, strange, the replies were not visible when I wrote my answer, so I guess this was unnecessarily redundant.

 

[valdikor]

I can see there is a lot of confusion between USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 (or later), which is not surprising, since they use the same port.

However, while you can connect a FireWire device to a Thunderbolt 3 port using a set of adapters (as stated above), you cannot do it with a "regular" USB-C port.

That is not an issue for most Macs, but some have USB-C-only ports (without Thunderbolt capablility) and those will not work with FireWire, no matter what adapters you use. It is not even theoretically possible.

Make sure the USB-C port is also a Thunderbolt port and it will work as expected with the appropriate adapters.