for firewire audio interfaces....

[mojew]

such as the m-audio solo... do i need a 6 pin firewire port? or will it connect to a 4 pin one? I can't seem to find any notebooks i can afford that have 6 pin ports, and i'd like to work on building a mobile songwriting kinda workstation.

 

[Tifstorey]

I think the extra 2 pins in a 6 pin firewire connection is just for externally powered units... I could be wrong, but i think that is just to power devices.

You can always purchase external little units that will give you extra firewire ports if necessary. So you could buy the notebook in your range and then buy one of those?

Hope that helps a little...

good luck

 

[Tifstorey]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=60269&item=6777569922&rd=1

^^ that gives you 3x 6 pin firewire slots.

 

[mojew]

wow! that card is awesome! i had no idea those even existed!!! thanks!!!!!

 

[sile2001]

Tifstorey is correct that the extra 2 pins just carry power to the device. I use a Motu 828mkII (which only has 6 pin ports) with my notebook (which only has 4 pin ports). I just bought a firewire cable with the 6 pin connector on one end and the 4 pin on the other, and it works just fine!

That card Tifstorey linked to will work just fine, but note that even though it has 6 pin connectors, it will NOT provide power to attached devices. The two power pins on those ports are just left unused. The reason is that the PCMCIA bus does not supply that firewire card with the amount of current that it would need to power external devices.

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Yup- the extra 2 pins are just for passing power. Unless your firewire interface is bus powered, you won't need them. A 4-ping to 6-pin FW cable should get you in business.

Be carefull with the PC card FW adapters. I've found a few that DON'T pass power even though they have 6-pin sockets. I'm not sure why that is of if I just have some setting wrong somewhere, but it kinda sucks if you're trying to use bus powered harddrives or iPods.

Take care,
Chris

 

[sile2001]

Yup- the extra 2 pins are just for passing power. Unless your firewire interface is bus powered, you won't need them. A 4-ping to 6-pin FW cable should get you in business.

Be carefull with the PC card FW adapters. I've found a few that DON'T pass power even though they have 6-pin sockets. I'm not sure why that is of if I just have some setting wrong somewhere, but it kinda sucks if you're trying to use bus powered harddrives or iPods.

Take care,
Chris

I explained this in the post above . The cards don't pass the power because they don't GET the power. The PCMCIA bus (or PC card bus, as some call it) was never designed to run external devices drawing so much power. Those PC Card FW adapters drawn current all by themselves, and that's about as much current as the PCMCIA bus was designed to provide. We're talking minimal circuitry here, like a compact modem or wireless network card.