are there PCI thunderbolt cards for mac pro 3.1?

I haven't seen any drive docks with Thunderbolt yet (we sure could use one), but Apple's Thundebolt to FireWire adapter should work fine with the drive dock you already have.

Seagate's GoFlex desktop base for FireWire works adequately with bare 3.5" drives (the veritical positioning of the drive is not very balanced, nor very secure), so I would suspect that the Seagate Desktop Thunderbolt Adapter works about as well.

-Warren

Seagate uses standard hard drives. The adaptor is just, an adaptor. The drive can be removed and installed in any computer or drive enclosure.

OWC sells this LaCie adapter and bundles it with their eSATA enclosure.

They have also announced a dual-drive enclosure similar to the above with the ThunderBolt interface inside.

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ASUS and intel have announced that they are releasing a Thunderbolt 2 PCIE card, so we know at least a Mac Pro will be able to run thunderbolt under bootcamp, the question will be if this card will operate under OS X, there is a good chance it may, the card has a Display port input so you can pipe your graphics card output into it then feed it up your thunderbolt line, will be interesting to see if thunderbolt displays will function from this card properly, it may give some new life to an aging Mac Pro.

I think its called a ThunderboltEX II

Those cards do not just go into any PC, they go into one's that have a TB chip on the logicboards.

They could even say if they want "requires PCIe 3.0+"

Upgrade is only for some motherboards, TBEX II may upgrade a mobo that has TB to TB2 and requires new BIOS, when do you last see EFI firmware from Apple for a 2010 or even 2012 doing that?

http://rog.asus.com/280892013/news/asus-thunderboltex-ii-what-you-need-to-know/

http://www.bing.com/search?q=ThunderboltEX+II

Well, son-of-a-gun! That didn't sound like it was going to be possible. I can only think they relegated the once CPU only support to a separate chip on the card.

Edit: Hmm, maybe not. Seems the card will only work with supported system boards.

Dam, should have read the articles through completely, it's a shame as something like this would have been nice for an early Mac Pro upgrade.

Looks like those who really want TB support are forced to upgrade.

Kung-Foo-Kamel wrote:

something like this would have been nice for an early Mac Pro upgrade.

Don't wait. Its not possible for that to ever happen.

I'm not, I'm already moving on to the new Pro, just thought this card would have been good for the countless others that are having trouble affording or justifying the upgrade, especially if they have they last of the old style Mac Pro, but year it's a lost cause.

Here is a Thunderbolt card that might work with a Mac Pro. I would be surprised if it did not. It is a PCIe architecture. The only concern i have the fit in to a Mac Pro expansion slot.

Asus ThunderboltEx II Thunderbolt Card.

You can get it on eBay for $65 US.

gl

Asus card only works with an Asus motherboard designed for it.

Rick

So I've read through this long topic, and as a user of an older Mac Pro (early 2008), I've been contemplating buying the new MacPro. My thought was to re-purpose my old MacPro as an external storage device... so my desire to give it Thunderbolt capability is not to use a display, but to be able to be connected to the new Mac Pro, and for that computer to be able to utilize the existing storage. Does anyone know of a way to basically connect an old Mac Pro to the new Mac Pro where it could utilize the esisting storage? USB? It seems silly to have to go out and buy an enclosure when I have one sitting next to my desk now, with the drives and data already intact... I appreciate any feedback on this...

Waldroje-

The way you already have is Gigabit Ethernet. With large block size enabled, it provides "near Hard Drive" speeds.

The Ethernet Switches required are not on the front counter at Best Buy, but they are a commodity item available at the Apple online store in 5, 8, 12, 16, and 24 port models. You need not replace your Internet Router unless you needed to anyway, as computer-to-computer transfers on the same subnet go direct, they are not Routed.

thanks Grant... I will look into that... I guess my question would be for software like FCP, will it treat those drives like "network" drives though, and not allow you to save media to. I was hoping to ensure that the drives are viewed as "attached" drives, and not have to jump through hoops to get it to behave that way.

Hi Waldroje:

Target Disk Mode does this. I usually refer to it as "hard drive mode".

To start Target Disk Mode on your older MacPro, hold down the "t" key during startup. You can do this with or without a monitor connected. The advantage of having a monitor connected is that you will see the FireWire symbol displayed on the monitor as confirmation that you are in Target Disk Mode as opposed to a regular startup.

To end Target Disk Mode, press and hold the power key until the Mac turns off (usually takes about 10 seconds).

You will need to patch your older MacPro to your new MacPro via Apple's Thunderbold to FireWire adapter and a FireWire800 cable. You can do this at any time (it's plug and play).

Unfortunately, you will only get FireWire800 speeds, but your older MacPro will behave like a directly attached hard drive (or drives if your MacPro has more than one drive installed).

For future reference, this feature should work with any Mac that has a FireWire or Thunderbolt port (there are a few laptops that are USB only). If the Target Disk Mode machine a much older Mac (like a G5, G4, G3), then only the master drive will mount.

-Warren