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Thunderbolt2 dock used over FW800 with a PowerMac?
- Thread starter barracuda156
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Wont work, TB2 requires more bandwidth than FW800 supplies. Not to mention they are based on two completely different technologies; TB is basically a PCIe bus, FW800 is more akin to SCSI. TB to FW exists (PCIe to FW800, think FW800 PCIe cards for PC's), but not the other way around.
Bandwidth is obvious, but having a speed cut to that of FW is perfectly okay, were that the only issue.
The only way a Thunderbolt dock would work with a Power Mac is if you connected a Thunderbolt add-in card to a PCIe slot (Quad G5) or a PCI slot with a PCIe adapter. If the dock was detected (might require some software to be created to make the Thunderbolt add-in card power on), the USB ports wouldn't work until you create a XHCI driver for Tiger or Leopard. I haven't tried a Thunderbolt add-in card in a Power Mac yet. There might be other reasons why it won't work. If it can work, it will be limited to ≈ 800 MB/s in a Quad G5 and 133 MB/s in other Power Macs unless you can find a super rare PCIe x4 to 64-bit PCI-X adapter and have a Power Mac with 64-bit or 66 MHz PCI slot.