Last Mac Pro with Firewire 400?

The latest Mac Pro with FW400 is the early 2008 model. I have one (see specs below), and it works great. The other posters have given good suggestions, but I agree with your point--it is a bit frustrating. There are still a lot of devices out there that are FW400 only, and having to use adapters for some of your most basic connections seems a bit silly.

You can always go out and get an inexpensive FW400 PCI card. We're talking about a $30 investment for that.

Message was edited by: JD Marlow

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=FW400PCIcard&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=wWutSf7VG9-Btwed2qWGBg&sa=X&oi=productresultgroup&resnum=1&ct=title

Message was edited by: JD Marlow

TRC, it does have FW 800. What about a FW 400 to 800 adapter? That should take care of the lack of FW 400 ports.

There is/was only one FW channel shared by all ports.

Add a FW hub, or use a FW800 2 FW400 adapter cable;

Or for hard drives, I really think native SATA drive cases etc is the only way to go.

On my Mac Pro I added PCIe FW800 to have a 2nd dedicated channel. On my G4s I had two FW800 PCI cards.

FW400 doesn't really offer much. USB3 would.

None of those cards will work. The MacPro uses PCIExpress.

There are Sonnet 400 cards, 400/USB and 800/USB cards that are PCIe and work fine or I seem to have some protoypes that are unique since I have one of each working now. And 800-400 9/6 cables have been around for years and work fine.

All they've really done is made all the FW ports 800 , a good idea really.

Sorry to disagree, but to me, expecting a company to go to the expense of engineering in a different physical port just to save someone from having to use a simple, inexpensive cable adaptor seems a bit silly. I'd rather have all my ports be FW800 and get adapters/cables where I need them; that way I have all my ports at the fastest standard. There are many companies with FW800 to FW400 cables, and Sonnet makes a nifty and inexpensive 800-to-400 adapter.

Regards.

Fair points, to be sure. I just think that, given the number of common/popular devices that are FW400 only, the removal of FW400 ports is a bit premature at this time. Like the OP said, it would be frustrating to buy a very expensive computer, and immediately have to expand in order to make use of fairly standard and not yet out-dated gear.

Dave Sawyer wrote:
Sorry to disagree, but to me, expecting a company to go to the expense of engineering in a different physical port just to save someone from having to use a simple, inexpensive cable adaptor seems a bit silly.

It couldn't be that hard/expensive, given that previous models had both. Though I certainly understand the idea of reducing cost wherever possible.

I bought a Sonnet Tango Express FW800/USB 2.0 card for PCI Express from OWC for $100 last february for my G5 Quad. It works fine.

Eddie O

this is the forward moving technology industry; Do professionals prefer to use 14 year old technology?

the simple adapter or other suggested means are perfectly capable of handling what you need it to.
if we were to not move forward with technological changes wed probably be stuck with less memory capabilities, agp or worse graphics cards, etc etc.


all my fw400 gear work with the new MBPs with these adapters.

your cracked to spend that kind of money on a computer. God! Apple's are starting to turn out like car buying.

jdredge wrote:
Fair points, to be sure. I just think that, given the number of common/popular devices that are FW400 only, the removal of FW400 ports is a bit premature at this time.

Sure if they were rendered unusable or obsolete. A $4 adapter or a $9 cable is not enough to keep carping about and I'd rather have 4 800's than a mix of 400 and 800's since I have the ability to still use both and the 800 is faster.

"9-PIN to 6-PIN BILINGUAL FIREWIRE 800-400 CABLE"

$5.00 on eBay

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-6FT-9-PIN-to-6-PIN-BILINGUAL-FIREWIRE-800-400-CABLEW0QQitemZ290300110611QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_Cables_Adapters?hash=item29030011061 1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&trkparms=72%3A1234%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1% 7C294%3A50