Preparing to purchase a MacBookPro..

[Ork]

I use pro tools on my PC... I am sick of it and am dreaming of the day when I dont receive all their errors. Apparently Mac is the way to go.

I am going to college and would like a portable laptop.
I need to connect an external drive to record to because i do not want to record to my main drive. I will be satisfied with FW 800 or Esata transfer speeds.

My audio interface connects via Firewire 400.
The External drive (when I purchase it) will use FW800 or Esata.

These Mac Book Pros do not have the specific I/O's that I need. This is very frustrating.

Can someone please show me an alternative or fix to this problem??
I would prefer a 15" due to the fact that I will be carrying it around classes. I know the Express Card slot is only available on the 17" so.....

If anyone has any adapters or even advice/rumours as to whether the next line of MBP's will have a better, more practical set of I/O's Please let me know.

 

[MrPresident]

i believe that you can daisy chain firewire devices. such as;

macbook pro
firewire 800 port
|
external hard drive
firewire 400 port
|
audio interface

i'm not sure if this is entirely accurate but do a little searching on google and you may find results.

here, i did it;
http://www.mhsecure.com/technotes/TechNote_0010/TN_0010.php

 

[Ork]

Will this work?

Thanks man... so I read the website... shud i do this??

MBP ---> fw800 ----> External Drive ---> fw400 ---> Rack 003+ Interface

i did some more reasearch and i found out that mixing the firewire types in the same bus can cause problems for pro tools.. SO would this work better??

MBP ---> fw800 ----> External Drive ---> fw800 - fw400 converter ---> Rack 003+ Interface

?

Thanks for your help

 

[zimv20]

what's the link to the site describing the problem?

Mixing 400 and 800 is generally okay, with the caveat that it will step down the entire chain to 400. That will still carry plenty of audio, btw.