Texas Instruments firewire in Dell T7500, T5500, T3500?

[iain_m]

Hi all,

Looking at the Dell Workstations qualified by Avid on this page, I'm curious to know whether these have Texas Instruments firewire chips on board:

• Dell Precision T7500 Tower Workstation
• Dell Precision T5500 Tower Workstation
• Dell Precision T3500 Tower Workstation

I have looked at the Dell website, and also searched far and wide (including these DUC forums), but haven't found any conclusive information.

Does anyone with direct experience of any of these PCs know what firewire chip is on board?

Thanks!

[TOM@METRO]

If they are qualified by Avid, they will likely run all qualified firewire interfaces. If you do run into issues. a PCIe TI firewire controller can be had for around $30.

[Raggi]

Hi.
We have some of these modells like T5500, T5400, T7...someting ang I don't belive they have Firewire built into them, no.

[iain_m]

Thanks for the replies.

Looking at the configuration options on the Dell website, it appears that the firewire is -- confusingly -- available under the choice of tower: e.g. "Standard Base Mid-Tower (Vertical orientation) with Firewire Included (Westmere)".

This suggests it's provided as an add-in card, although it doesn't say which brand.

Raggi, do you know if any of your T**** machines are using a firewire card supplied by Dell?

[Raggi]

Sorry, no we use very little firewire equipment on these computer, so I can't answer that.

[iain_m]

No worries.

By the way -- what are the fan noise levels like with these machines?

[iain_m]

Update -- I chatted online with a Dell rep, who has said that the T3500, at least, has a TI firewire chipset.

I also found out that the e-star case uses a quieter PSU than the standard one.