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capoeiraguri

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 20, 2007
14
0
The Mac Pro only has 2 400 and 2 800 ports. and I was wondering if there was a way to get more, or split them. I have a lot of externals and an isight, etc.

Or maybe a solution is daisy-chaining harddrives, does anyone know anything about this, or how to do it.. I'm afraid to experiment with my data.

Thanks a bunch.
 

filman408

macrumors regular
Sep 4, 2006
179
15
San Jose, CA
The Mac Pro only has 2 400 and 2 800 ports. and I was wondering if there was a way to get more, or split them. I have a lot of externals and an isight, etc.

Or maybe a solution is daisy-chaining harddrives, does anyone know anything about this, or how to do it.. I'm afraid to experiment with my data.

Thanks a bunch.

Um... PCI Express card
 

kgarner

macrumors 68000
Jan 28, 2004
1,512
0
Utah
Daisy chaining works fine. I had 2 drives hooked up to my Mini via daisy chaining before upgrading to the Mac Pro (now I have 1 drive on each) and it worked fine. I even would hook up the DV Camcorder to the end of the daisy chain when I needed to capture some video and it worked fine too.
 

treehorn

macrumors 6502
Aug 21, 2007
467
0
I'd advise getting a PCI card.

But before you buy anything, do some reading on each of your peripherals to make sure there are no hidden surprises (I have a Firebox, for instance, and it turns out that A) it doesn't work with USB/Firewire card combos and B) doesn't work with a certain chip...of course I initially bought a card that broke both of those 'rules')

With hard drives there's no problems (that I've ever encountered or heard about at least) but it wouldn't hurt to read requirements/warnings on odd peripherals (like audio or video equipment)
 

supercooled

macrumors 6502a
Sep 6, 2007
737
1
Pathetic.

It gives you the impression that Apple is abandoning the Firewire standard the way they're treating it. Isn't FW800 backwards compatible? Why even include FW400 anymore.

Are generic PCI-e SATA expansion cards compatible or do I need some fancy one with special drivers?
 

offshoresa65s

macrumors member
Apr 15, 2008
34
0
Hi

I have a new MACPRO 2.8 GHZ machine.

I've always used an extra PCI Firewire card in my old G4 Mac. Helped to capture video to ext Firewire drives as Mac's can't / don't deal with two devices on the same internal firewire bus.

From research there are two types of PCI-e card available that extends your Firewire capabilities on the MacPro.

One has a chipset that is designed / developed by SiiG and another that uses a Texas Instruments chipset.

If you do a Google search for "MaPro firewire 800 PCI-e card" you'll end up finding both, at various sites.

It's a little confusing at times as those sites that sell the card that uses SiiG chipsets say -> compatible with MacPro, but then qualify the compatibility by saying, often, not compatible with Quad Core Chips.

I emailed SiiG and they said that that any PCIe card you find on a site with the confusing info, will work in a MacPro 8-core mac.

In the end i went for this card as there is no confusion with any compatibility issues:http://www.synchrotech.com/products-pcie/pcie-firewire-800_01.html

Anyway, I've installed this card and it works. I really wanted a card that gave me 3 x Firewire 800 ports, but it seems that 2 x 800 and 1 x 400 external ports is about the best you'll find on the market.

I've installed it in Slot 3 and I've installed a HighPoint RocketRaid 2314 ESATA card in Slot 4.

Anyway do a search and se what you can ind out there, mine works fine.

Chers

O
 

killmoms

macrumors 68040
Jun 23, 2003
3,752
55
Durham, NC
Seriously, just get a powered Firewire hub. I'm not sure I understand the issue here.

And yes, daisy-chaining works fine, Firewire was designed for it from day one.
 
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