17" Macbookpro Firewire Options

[tig66]

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a 17" MacbookPro maxed out with 2Gb RAM for use with the new Cubase4 Studio and Kontakt2 sampler + various other VST Instruments.. Spectrasonics, Latigo etc..

I also have an MAudio FW410 interface which I currently use on my G4 Powerbook.. it doesn't give me any problems - as long as I have nothing else connected to either the FW400 or 800 buss.

My question is, are the fw400 and 800 connections on the MacbookPro on seperate busses, or the same?

As I want to go for the faster 100Gb internal drive (7200rpm) I may need to also buy an external 7200rpm FW800 drive to accomodate all my project data.. samples , audio etc.. obviously, if I did this I wouldn't be able to run the MAudio interface reliably if the 800 bus was being shared or 'seen' by the 400 buss..

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated..

Thx

[lancet]

My question is, are the fw400 and 800 connections on the MacbookPro on seperate busses, or the same?

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/H...04266-TPXREF101


they are on the same buss.

[lepetitmartien]

My only solutions are either a USB 2 drive or find a firewire ExpressCard/34… like this one (now, never used or heard of it, so I can't assure it's perfect.)

Belkin is working on one as far as I've seen on google, but it's not out already…

[tig66]

Thanks guys for the info.. appreciated - so that's more or less it then I guess..

OK.. I've just had a look at a few fw800 expresscard/34's - looking at the specs, it may be the best option rather than just utilising USB2.. although some of the externals ie. LaCie, have triple interfaces anyway.

The Belkin card appears to be on sale according to some sales sites I've browsed - such as:
http://www.bestbuybusiness.com/bbfb/en/US/...ion=showDetails

Around $80 seems a decent price to pay for the extra bandwidth/speed gained over USB2 + although I haven't seen any reviews of these cards, I would assume that there (hopefully) shouldn't be any issues with them!
Still.. having the ability of being able to 'stream' my Kontakt2 samples real time via Cubase etc. from an external fw800 drive, will allow me more bandwidth on the MacbookPro - whilst at the same time not crashing my dodgy MAudio FW410 !

Thanks again guys..

[tig66]

I know this is slightly 'off topic' but still relevant to my original 17" MacbookPro query.

Another alternative could be an eSATA expresscard/34 for use with serial ATA (SAT II) drives which apparently offer speeds nearly 4 times faster than FW800 - eg. this Firmtek card:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2sm2-e/

I also found this interesting review of the Firmtek SeriTek/2SM2-E card used on a MacbookPro:
http://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html

Obviously, this could end up more costly than the FW800 alternative ie. SAT expresscard/34 card + SAT drivebay enclosure and the removable drives themselves.. but then I would have a fast (and portable) system for handling my samples and audio etc..

Finally, does anyone have any actual experience of using SAT drives compared to FW800 for audio?

Thanks

[thedomus]

LaCie Little Big Disk - fast enough!
Myself and a friend use the firmtek with powered FW800 drives, works well!
Spectrasonics - RMX is Intel ready, Atmos & Trilogy not until the fall. In fact check that all the software you want to use is Intel raedy (Universal Binary).
I've ordered the Sonnettech R400Q, buying drives from Overclockers, that plus Macbook Pro is a well speedy system! I hope...

[lepetitmartien]

SATA/eSATA is faster than the drives you can hook them to… even in RAID 0

Remember the internal drives are SATA on mac since the G5 so it's no virgin territory. And now the limit is the drive, it'll take the coming flash drives to have a significant boost in access speed but it's a different and not immediate issue.