NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card (34)
After some foot dragging by FireWire direct, today I finally received the NitroAV FireWire 800/1394b Express Card ordered almost a month ago.
First Impressions: Unimpressive at best.
According to the FireWire direct rep, it is supposed to work using the Mac OS built in drivers and require no additional driver....
Upon first insertion, my MacBook Pro promptly went into a kernel panic.
NOT a good introductory performance!
Upon restart, I did get the thing to work, "sort of".
First, it requires AC power even with a 2.5" external drive meant for bus power. Bummer, but so be it. However, less acceptable: it is VERY fussy about sequence, reminding me of evil SCSI voodoo rituals from the past century. Seems it only likes to work once- if I remove the card, it requires a reboot to recognize anything attached to it subsequently.
Functionality is intermittent. Sometimes I can mount and unmount a drive several times in a row, sometimes just once before it fails to recognize the drive and requires another reboot. One drive it took a long time to recognize but eventually it did- only to freeze up rock solid soon thereafter requiring an uncomfortable long push on the power button to shut down- nothing else worked. That drive was a known to be working Lacie, the first a known to be working WiebeTech and both are totally reliable on my G5 and previously completely reliable on the MacBook Pro using the integrated FireWire 400 port.
Unscientific results so far show a modest speed increase transferring a few large files, nothing like double the FireWire 800 speed hoped for. In any case if it ain't reliable it ain't gettin' used. Hoping for a driver solution in 10.4.7? (Wishful thinking)
No one likes a fussy device, much less one doomed to corrupting directories with that kind of behavior. I'm disappointed with Apple for omitting the FireWire 800 port on the 15 inch model and leaving us with this cheesy "solution".
I am not a big fan of dongles, or things like Express cards which are just asking for trouble by introducing intermediary third party connectivity issues exactly like these...
Oh yeh, and the little metal door on the Express Card slot tends to hang open and not snap closed- just to add insult to the whole process.
First Impressions: Unimpressive at best.
According to the FireWire direct rep, it is supposed to work using the Mac OS built in drivers and require no additional driver....
Upon first insertion, my MacBook Pro promptly went into a kernel panic.
NOT a good introductory performance!
Upon restart, I did get the thing to work, "sort of".
First, it requires AC power even with a 2.5" external drive meant for bus power. Bummer, but so be it. However, less acceptable: it is VERY fussy about sequence, reminding me of evil SCSI voodoo rituals from the past century. Seems it only likes to work once- if I remove the card, it requires a reboot to recognize anything attached to it subsequently.
Functionality is intermittent. Sometimes I can mount and unmount a drive several times in a row, sometimes just once before it fails to recognize the drive and requires another reboot. One drive it took a long time to recognize but eventually it did- only to freeze up rock solid soon thereafter requiring an uncomfortable long push on the power button to shut down- nothing else worked. That drive was a known to be working Lacie, the first a known to be working WiebeTech and both are totally reliable on my G5 and previously completely reliable on the MacBook Pro using the integrated FireWire 400 port.
Unscientific results so far show a modest speed increase transferring a few large files, nothing like double the FireWire 800 speed hoped for. In any case if it ain't reliable it ain't gettin' used. Hoping for a driver solution in 10.4.7? (Wishful thinking)
No one likes a fussy device, much less one doomed to corrupting directories with that kind of behavior. I'm disappointed with Apple for omitting the FireWire 800 port on the 15 inch model and leaving us with this cheesy "solution".
I am not a big fan of dongles, or things like Express cards which are just asking for trouble by introducing intermediary third party connectivity issues exactly like these...
Oh yeh, and the little metal door on the Express Card slot tends to hang open and not snap closed- just to add insult to the whole process.
MacBookPro 2.0, G5 2.5 dual, Mac OS X (10.4.5), My Shuffle has 25x more capacity than my first Mac
