Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus pwrd?
 

I have a new "October 2005" Powerbook G4 1.67 15"(not yet Digi qualified, but I guess eventually will have to be, right?) and a Firewire 1814. I wanted to try to use a Wiebetech ComboGB bus- powered Firewire 800/400/USB drive(7200 rpm with Oxford 922 chipset)utilizing this drive on the firewire 800 port on the computer, leaving the 1814 connected to the 400 port on the powerbook, the theory here being to use a completely bus-powered setup for Pro-Tools M-Powered. Would anyone here have any experiences with a setup simalar or like this? Just wanted to make sure that it would work before shelling out the big cash for the FW 800 hard drive...

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus pwrd?
 

Refer to my "Firewire 800??" post just below yours....

A regular wall outlet powered FW800 drive doesn't work with my FW1814....I doubt a bus powered one will....haha...Digi screwed up on this one, big time.

-Louie

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus pwrd?
 

It's Apple's fault actually. The FW400 and FW800 ports on those powerbook actually share the same bus and are causing problems for non-pro audio stuff as well. The USB ports are also suspect, check out the LE forum threads on the Powerbook/Mbox2 issues.

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus pwrd?
 

Here's another idea that may work(hopefully...?) The Wiebetech ComboHD can be connected to the USB port(just for bus power, if the firewire bus isn't sufficient) while running on either a FW 400 or 800 port(daisy chained to the Firewire 1814, instead of the FW800 port on the powerbook). Any suggestions?

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus p
 

I'm not sure that would work, since the system will most-likely be expecting two data sources (one from the USB bus and another from the FW bus). You can try it (you never know), but at a guess, one of the buses will overide the other.

onlyone-jc

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus p
 

Another possible scenario is to use a PCMCIA card for the hard drive. I know with older machines that running an external firewire hard drive and a firewire interface from the same port often gave trouble, so some guys as a work around were using the onboard interface for their audio interface, and a PCMCIA firewire card for the external hard drive. Back then their protools systems didn't support using USB external hard drives, only firewire.

If there is mains available, you could also try using a powered USB hub to deliver some more power to the hard drive (could be fraught with the potential to damage the host machine though).

Re: Will this configuration work-1814 and HD bus pwrd?
 

The issue with firewire 400 and 800 is nothing more than bad driver code. Consider this: Video data streaming, with 96k audio, can stream in a firewire 400 port and directly out to a firewire 800 RAID drive array on my G5. Nothing that my Firewire 410 will do will ever come remotely close to the bandwidth required by the full video and audio signal. Yet, the streaming video with audio works flawlessly.
How else could you have problems passing only audio over only Firewire 400? It can't be faster sampling to reduce latency - it's eaxctly the same as the audio in my digital capture. It can't be that my computer isn't fast enough. I can do this video trick with both my G4 PowerBook and by G5 Dual 2.5 machine. I have the same Firewire issues with both setups using the M-Powered stuff.
It can't be that Apple has done something wrong because their setup seems to handle vastly more data than M-Powered stuff will ever need.
I think the only conclusion is flawed driver software and I think we have all waited too long for the problem to be corrected. Either hire some help to fix your drivers or I think all M-Audio and M-Powered customers who have been forced to tolerate this nonsense should be given a full refund. Beyond wasting all of our money, their mis-handling of this issue continues to cost all of us precious time.