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

[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..