1 interface, 1 hard drive, only ONE firewire interface?

[beyoutofull1]

Howdy folks,

That should read, "only ONE firewire port?" oops.

from
http://aria.digidesign.com/index.cfm...4&itemid=37251

"The late 2008 and early 2009 "unibody" MacBook Pro models have a FireWire 800 port, and no longer have a FireWire 400 port:

The FireWire 800 port on these computers is backwards compatible* with FireWire 400 devices, but requires one of the following configuration options:

1) FW800 port —> FW800 Drive (912 or 924 chipset) —> Out FW400 port on Drive —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface

2) FW800 port —> FW800 to FW400 converter cable —> FW400 Drive (911 chipset) —> Multiple FW400 Drives (911 chipset) as needed for maximum track count —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface"



Then, if you have a single firewire port on your laptop, you can run both the interface and the recording drive through it without issue?


This would be awesome. Otherwise I'll have to get a laptop with a firewire port and an express card 34 slot.

Thanks Gangstas,
Brian

[Kevin Windrem]

I have a single FireWire port on both my iMac and Gateway laptop and have discovered stable connections for both a drive and M-Audio ProFire 2626 interface. It does take some experimentation to find a stable connection order and it may not be the same on all computers.

On the iMac, I connect the FW800 port to a FW800 drive (OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro) (Oxford 924 chipset) via FW800 (9-pin) cable, then on to the ProFire via FW400 (6-pin) cable. I get 800 Mb/s speeds to the drive this way. (Connecting to the interface first did not provide a stable connection.)

The PC has a 4-pin FW400 port. A stable connection required connecting to the ProFire interface first, then on to the drive via 6-pin ports on both devices. (Connecting to the drive first (via 4-pin to 9-pin cable) would not provide a stable disk or interface connection.)

Others have reported other connection schemes necessary to provide stable connections.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by beyoutofull1

Howdy folks,

That should read, "only ONE firewire port?" oops.

from
http://aria.digidesign.com/index.cfm...4&itemid=37251

"The late 2008 and early 2009 "unibody" MacBook Pro models have a FireWire 800 port, and no longer have a FireWire 400 port:

The FireWire 800 port on these computers is backwards compatible* with FireWire 400 devices, but requires one of the following configuration options:

1) FW800 port —> FW800 Drive (912 or 924 chipset) —> Out FW400 port on Drive —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface

2) FW800 port —> FW800 to FW400 converter cable —> FW400 Drive (911 chipset) —> Multiple FW400 Drives (911 chipset) as needed for maximum track count —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface"



Then, if you have a single firewire port on your laptop, you can run both the interface and the recording drive through it without issue?


This would be awesome. Otherwise I'll have to get a laptop with a firewire port and an express card 34 slot.

Thanks Gangstas,
Brian

You should be able to daisychain multiple FW devices as described

[Wavelabs]

IMHO - I believe that every company should due away with Firewire-400
and just strictly be Firewire-800 connection only.

They should not even sell any 400's at all.
should be taken off the shelf and thrown away.

As the OP said, FW-800 is backwards compatible anyways.
and 10x better connection anyways,
Plus people would gain faster speeds with FW-800 connections anyways on top of that.

FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) 400 Mbit/sec
FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) 800 Mbit/sec

Many companies doing these FW devices that still use Firewire-400 connections,
is just mind blowing and I just still can't believe it that they are still using the 400 version.

Its like they dont want to move forward or something.
All the FW-400 should be obsolete completely.

It takes the world so damn long to move forward, its just incredible.....

Thats my little rant and 3cents.


.

[TOM@METRO]

I don't disagree about FW800 but the current bottleneck now for audio streaming is the hard drive. When we get to using SSDs things will likely have to change some.

[sdevino]

Keep in mind that if you have a firewire interface, it can control the and manage the audio flow over the firewirebus. In other words the computer's clocking and data management are controlled by the FW interface actually the computer just caches the audio samples to the FW interface and it manages all the clocking).

So with CoreAudio FW interfaces it makes sense to use the USB2 for your external audio storage and retrieval. This frees up the FW capacity for multiple audio interfaces running at high sample rates and eliminates leaves data caching to the CPU and drive.

Those of us using high end FW devices with other non PT DAWs in the past have learned this. Now you can do the same thing with PT9.