Early 2009 Mac Pro: Adding a Firewire 400 card

I want to add a firewire 400 PCIe card to my Mac Pro as a last ditch effort to get my Presonus Firepods working properly. Presonus recommends the firewire card have a TI chipset. See my thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2770203&tstart=0

Two questions:

1. Any card recommendations known to work with large quantity audio throughput?

2. Most every card I've reviewed has a card-mounted molex power connector; will I need to supply auxiliary power to this connector to provide enough power for the Firepods?

2a. If I do need to provide auxiliary power to the card. Where do I pick it up from? Is there a connector/cable somewhere inside the Mac Pro?

TIA User uploaded file

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5), Mac Pro Quad Core

Posted on Mar 24, 2011 10:36 PM

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4 replies

Mar 25, 2011 4:53 AM in response to mrsixstrings

I'd take a look at the Sonnet range of cards. I use them for video, which I guess has similar throughput and lack-of-latency requirements to multi-channel audio.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/allegrofw400pcie.html

I believe you only need the aux.power feed to such cards *if your FW devices take power down the FW cable*. If your FW devices are separately powered from the AC mains, I suspect you won't need the aux.power feed to the card.

If you find you do need an aux.power feed, I guess you can find an adapter/extender from the unused second optical disk drive power connector?

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Early 2009 Mac Pro: Adding a Firewire 400 card

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