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Orion27 · Jan 11, 2006, 03:22 PM

Can anyone link me to ExpressCard/34 supplier specifically Firewire 400/800
Having a hard time finding supplier.

mduell · Jan 11, 2006, 05:33 PM

I haven't seen any... they're all ExpressCard/54 (same connector/capability, just a larger card).

But I'm sure Apple's product release has given the ExpressCard manufacturers a kick in the pants.

Diggory Laycock · Jan 11, 2006, 07:00 PM

I think there is a link in the PowerBo^h^h^h^h^h^h MacBook Pro Thread about a just announced FW800 ExpressCard.

It's not released yet - but should be soon....

here you go..

http://www.siig.com/news.asp?pr=46

mduell · Jan 11, 2006, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by Diggory Laycock

I think there is a link in the PowerBo^h^h^h^h^h^h MacBook Pro Thread about a just announced FW800 ExpressCard.

It's not released yet - but should be soon....

here you go..

http://www.siig.com/news.asp?pr=46

The FW800 card is EC/54 not EC/34.

I think Apple made a mistake going with the smaller slot.

Tomchu · Jan 11, 2006, 10:50 PM

I don't see the point in doing FW800 over ExpressCard, unless you already have devices that you NEED that only have FW800. The bandwidth of ExpressCard is 1/3-1/4 that of FW800, making it worse than FW400. Combine that with probably higher CPU usage, and it just doesn't make sense.

mduell · Jan 11, 2006, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I don't see the point in doing FW800 over ExpressCard, unless you already have devices that you NEED that only have FW800. The bandwidth of ExpressCard is 1/3-1/4 that of FW800, making it worse than FW400. Combine that with probably higher CPU usage, and it just doesn't make sense.

You're mistaken. ExpressCard supports both PCIe (1x) and USB2 (hi-speed) connections; the card manufacturer gets to choose which to use. PCIe has about 2.5 times the bandwidth of FW800 making a two port card sensible and a three port card possible.

analogika · Jan 12, 2006, 05:52 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

The FW800 card is EC/54 not EC/34.

I think Apple made a mistake going with the smaller slot.

I believe it's just a matter of time.

Apple is just a little too far ahead of the curve again, much the way they were when they went USB/Firewire-only at a time when hardly any peripherals were available.

Annoying for professionals and consumers who'd invested in instantly-obsoleted hardware, but six months later, there were no serious doubts that it was the right decision.

A real problem, though, will be those professionals who currently rely both upon Firewire 800 for storage and the CardBus for audio I/O. Although the S-ATA drive should alleviate the necessity of using both at the same time.

mduell · Jan 12, 2006, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by analogika

A real problem, though, will be those professionals who currently rely both upon Firewire 800 for storage and the CardBus for audio I/O. Although the S-ATA drive should alleviate the necessity of using both at the same time.

What? How does the choice of internal hard drive bus change the needs for external drives and devices?

Tomchu · Jan 12, 2006, 08:11 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

You're mistaken. ExpressCard supports both PCIe (1x) and USB2 (hi-speed) connections; the card manufacturer gets to choose which to use. PCIe has about 2.5 times the bandwidth of FW800 making a two port card sensible and a three port card possible.

My apologies. I was relying on information claiming that ExpressCard was ~250 Mbps, as opposed to MBps.

schalliol · Jan 13, 2006, 09:27 AM

I can't tell what's /34 and what's /56, but http://www.expresscardorg.com/ notes a eSATA II ExpressCard & eSATA II ExpressCard RAID, as well as a /34 FireWire card (400 or 800? unknown).

mduell · Jan 13, 2006, 01:15 PM

From the left:
EC/34 (could be SATA, ethernet, or FW), EC/54 (looks like a flash card reader for CF), the next 3 are EC/34 with some sort of dongle connector (could be SATA, ethernet, or FW), the far right is EC/34 with no apparent external connector (could be cellular data), and the one inside the laptop is EC/34 (appears to be another flash card reader for SD).

analogika · Jan 13, 2006, 02:52 PM

None of those cards is Firewire 800.

There is currently NO 34-millimeter Firewire-800 card.

Graphic showing the difference in formats:
http://www.expresscard.org/photos/ex...cardbus-hi.jpg

analogika · Jan 13, 2006, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

What? How does the choice of internal hard drive bus change the needs for external drives and devices?

for most audio-related tasks, the reason for using external hard drives is SPEED.

The newer S-ATA drives are quite a bit faster than older ATA internal drives, thus obviating the need to use two external data busses (one to/from I/O device, one to storage device) in many cases.

mduell · Jan 13, 2006, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by analogika

The newer S-ATA drives are quite a bit faster than older ATA internal drives

They are? Links?

analogika · Jan 15, 2006, 06:36 AM

Sorry, it seems you're right: in laptops, the drive itself is the bottleneck.

schalliol · Jan 15, 2006, 10:40 AM

Just because there currently is no FireWire 800 card doesn't mean there won't be. I'll wager that by 2/15 (est. standard ship date of all MacBook Pros, it seems) that someone will at least have announced one. If the card can go directly into the PCI-E bus, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do this.

schalliol · Jan 15, 2006, 10:41 AM

Accidental double post...