800/400 firewire config Q:iMac G5,Digi 002+ext drive

Hi Pezking-

Thanks for the response.

I had been thinking out loud and actually deleted my post thinking it hadn't been responded to because it might have been a dumb or obvious question. I should know better, this is a great place for great help. (Also I should mention I meant the newest iMacs in the thread title, not a G5)

I've been more of a cassette and reel kind of guy for the past few years after getting a little overwhelmed with my first real forray into Daw-land, and have been letting my Digi 002 sit in the corner and get dusty.




Plan "A"-
I have an older g4 that is ready to leave this world, and wanting to stay with mac, have been eying the new iMacs. However, they offer one 800 firewire connection, and four usb. The Digi 002 is a 400 firewire.

I was wondering how to optimally configure such a setup, along with an external drive. From what I had been reading, if you add a 400 to an 800 bus daisy chain, everything slows to the 400 speed.

I checked out a couple firewire hub things, but it wasn't clear to me if they let the 800 speed connected things maintain that speed if the hub also has 400 speed things connected to it as well.

A benefit of the new iMac is that it can take 16 gigs ram. And would come with snow leopard which as far as I know is not supported yet by Digi. (edit, I'm told it is now..yeah!)
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Plan "B"

In a newer development, I also I am thinking (and my wife is nodding her head okay..)I could buy our family's current main computer, a 3 yr old 20" iMac 2.4 intel dual core which came with Firewire 800 and 400 ports, and we would jointly pay the difference towards a new 21.5" 3.06 dual core iMac for the family.

The only downside I see is the limit of 4 gigs ram maxed, but I don't forsee huge track counts for my stuff. it would be cool to get into plug ins a bit though.

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So, at this point, I'm thinking buy the old iMac, and put the new one in the living room where it will be great for the thousands of photos it will be used to process.:)

Whee! Any insights, recommendations or advice welcome.

-M
 
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