Firewire 800 vs 400?

[mcphoto]

Hi all - I'm using a Firewire 410, which has the option of using the 400 or 800 port. For now I have it on the 400, so I don't have to run the Ac adapter (Bus power is on the 6-pin 400 port, the smaller 800 port isn't powered).

Would I see a significant improvement in 800? I find the 410 box to be wonky as hell; every time I launch ProTools, it won't play or record until I open the hardware setup and change something - doesn't matter what I actually "Change", buffer size, processor usage, etc... as long as i change SOMEthing. I got a fair amount of processor overruns, but those quieted down when I added 2GB more ram, for 5.5 total.

(Yeah I suppose I should just try it... but I'm running so much adobe software it takes a good 10 minutes to shut down - illustrator can take almost a minute to quit.... then there's all the crawling around...)

FYI - G5 2ghz dual Tiger; 5.5gb RAM; one big drive on the FW800 bus, one drive & the 410 on the 400 bus. Machine runs like an absolute charm... just purrs along all day while I flog it with Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Protools, Dreamweaver, Final Cut & InDesign - all open, all day. The dang 410 is my only problem child - well, that and my 19-year old daughter.

[Tom Stoeckel]

I'm not sure that you'd see any noticeable performance improvement by running the 410 off the FW800 bus. That said, I'd try running the 410 by itself on either the 400 or 800 port. You said the 410 and drive were on the same port. I've had mixed results doing that. The most reliable setup I've achieved was when I moved my Firewire 1814 to be the only device on the FW400 port and ran the audio drive off a FW800 expansion card - completely separate busses (at least they are on the MacBook Pro).

The other day I moved my office and had to disconnect everything in my system and reconnect in another room. I thought I had everything together the same as before but I was getting lots of spurious noise and kernel panics. I finally realized that I had plugged one of my external hard drives into the FW800 port on the same bus as where the 1814 was plugged into the FW400 port. That was enough to cripple the system. When I moved the drive back to chaining off the other external drive (like before) everything worked again.

[TechKnowledgy]

The FireWire 410, like all M-Audio FireWire devices, is a FireWire 400 device. It's not possible to use it on a FireWire 800 port. The other cable is a 6pin to 4pin FireWire 400 cable for use with PC laptops.

There are known issues when using FW800 drivers on the same FW bus as your audio interface:

Problems in combination with FW800 hard drives

The issue you're experiencing with the output not working right away is a problem with the M-Audio driver. It's been reported on several forums, but it's weird because it doesn't affect all users.

[mcphoto]

I'd try running the 410 by itself on either the 400 or 800 port.

Thanks for the quick replies--

I'll give that a shot - right now, I have the 410 on the 400 bus, with a hard drive that's connected, not always powered up, and rarely booted when it is powered. It was my former backup drive, but now I have a bigger one on the 800 bus for backup. So next time I shut down, I'll pull that drive totally out of the loop - I've already promised it to one of my kiddos.

I'll poke around on lowendmac.com and see how many FW busses there really are in the G5...

My newer drive - on the 800 bus - has an eSata connector, so if I buy a card, I'll get an eSata RAID controller next and be set do a RAID for video down the line. Protools writes to an internal SATA so the ESATA shouldn't be an issue.

Speaking of backup drives, the latest Carbon Copy Cloner seems to have the bugs worked out - it's working great for me, runs backups every night.

[mcphoto]

From the Apple G5 Reference Material:

"The three FireWire ports share a single power supply that can provide up to 15 watts total. The three ports are all on the same FireWire bus and can connect to up 62 other FireWire devices."

Question answered...

[Eric Seaberg]

All Macs are the same. ALL FW PORTS are on the same buss. My G5 has a FW800/400 card and my MBPro also has a FW800 card so my drive always sits on that buss wherever I use it, keeping it separate from the interface.

[Tom Stoeckel]

All Macs are the same. ALL FW PORTS are on the same buss. My G5 has a FW800/400 card and my MBPro also has a FW800 card so my drive always sits on that buss wherever I use it, keeping it separate from the interface.

That's how I run it on my MBPro. The 1814 runs off the FW400 port and my laCie hard drive runs off the FW800 card in the expansion slot. That has been the optimal arrangement for me.

[Tom Stoeckel]

All Macs are the same. ALL FW PORTS are on the same buss. My G5 has a FW800/400 card and my MBPro also has a FW800 card so my drive always sits on that buss wherever I use it, keeping it separate from the interface.

That's how I run it on my MBPro. The 1814 runs off the FW400 port and my laCie hard drive runs off the FW800 card in the expansion slot. That has been the optimal arrangement for me.

[Hardin]

Hey folks, keep in mind Digi discourages running drives on different buses including FW400 and 800 at the same time. You should use only 1 TYPE of drive. I've seen kernel panics with different drive types running together.
I've been running a 410 and 3 FW400 drives off my single MBP port and had no problems - one drive was the record drive, one drive running a sample library for Structure and another drive for backup. So, it's possible.
Actually, I'm also able to run this interface and these drives with Pro Tools and Logic at the same time!! I had PT running 20-30 audio tracks from my record drive and synced with Logic through the IAC bus and running Giga files in ESX off the sample drive, all playing through the 410 at the same time. Both programs sharing the interface. Pretty cool.

[leonardrock]

Hey folks, keep in mind Digi discourages running drives on different buses including FW400 and 800 at the same time. You should use only 1 TYPE of drive. I've seen kernel panics with different drive types running together.
I've been running a 410 and 3 FW400 drives off my single MBP port and had no problems - one drive was the record drive, one drive running a sample library for Structure and another drive for backup. So, it's possible.
Actually, I'm also able to run this interface and these drives with Pro Tools and Logic at the same time!! I had PT running 20-30 audio tracks from my record drive and synced with Logic through the IAC bus and running Giga files in ESX off the sample drive, all playing through the 410 at the same time. Both programs sharing the interface. Pretty cool.

Holy crap, Hardin! You've restored my curiosity in chaining drives. So based on your success, running my 410 off my express card and chaining two FW 800's off my MBP would scream?!?!

I've been salivating over using an external sample drive to utilize with Ableton Live rewired with PT. That could be beastly seeing as though my system drive would no longer have to reference samples for Ableton and could simply power the two applications.

Damn, could this be fun.....