[albee1952]

That's an odd thing to say as the firewire bus should have zero effect on how plugins run(or how many you can run). Plugins are handled by the cpu(unless you have a TDM system or something like a UAD card setup). There is really no difference in performance with the 002 and any other firewire interface (excepting for the BLA mods making it sound better than some). A new 8 core Mac and PT9 should rock your world and the old 002 can take the ride with you. FWIW, my local Avid genius recommends 6-8GB of RAM, no more, no less. He said that amount will net the best performance overall, and any more RAM will not help(and might actually hurt a little). He sells plenty of systems, so I trust his opinions. Mac Pro 8 core, 8GB of RAM, 3 SATA drives and shoot for the moon!