Power Mac 5500, PCI Sound.. Options

Hi There! I'm setting up a Powermac 5500+ machine for hard disk recording, and I've run into a problem. The 5500 only has one PCI slot. I want to install a good sound card, but I don't want to limit the machine by not being able to expand it any further.
If I install a USB 2 or FireWire card to the PCI Slot, would I be able to run an external sound card / box with this machine? Have any of you used external sound cards with older Macs with any success ? The basic specs of the machine are 250Mhz 603e with 64 megs memory running OS8, but will be updateing to 128 Megs (the systems max) and OS8.x or maybe OS9 if it will take it..
A newer system is not an option here.

Thanks up front for any advice / opinions any of you fine people may offer.
Tom

[june bug]

you should better install a PCI sound card : better performances and cheaper I think than FWPCIcard+ FW sound interface.
How many I/O do you need ? An second-hand Audiomedia III for exemple is good choice if you don't need more I/O or higher sampling rate / resolution.
also look MOTU cards.

Thanks Junebug, I'll look into those cards. I only need a stereo in / out, and a standard midi connection. I'll be sending the line out from my fx board to the card for hard disk recording.. nothing fancy.. Thanks again! ........ Tom

[Saurabh Sethi]

Posted on Jun 27 2003, 04:37
Hi There! I'm setting up a Powermac 5500+ machine for hard disk recording, and I've run into a problem. The 5500 only has one PCI slot. I want to install a good sound card, but I don't want to limit the machine by not being able to expand it any further.
If I install a USB 2 or FireWire card to the PCI Slot, would I be able to run an external sound card / box with this machine? Have any of you used external sound cards with older Macs with any success ? The basic specs of the machine are 250Mhz 603e with 64 megs memory running OS8, but will be updateing to 128 Megs (the systems max) and OS8.x or maybe OS9 if it will take it..
A newer system is not an option here.

Thanks up front for any advice / opinions any of you fine people may offer.
Tom
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I would get a PCI card that has USB and Firewire ports. Then Get A USB or Firewire Audio Interface..Also, would stick with the oldest OS that works with all the software.. I dont know how much OS will take away in terms of oerfomance, but I think there aren't many advantages over OS 8 as far as recording audio/midi, so I why waste the CPU's resources..

[Synthetic]

I agree with Saurabh on the OS for 5500. I would just get newest version of OS 8 to use and stay away from OS 9 as it will eat more cpu cycles and OS 8 was much more stable than the previous OS systems. Also, the Audiomedia III cards could be a good choice but... getting USB or firewire PCI will give you at least 2 ports which is nice for using one with audio interface and still leaving one for use with another device.

Thanks !
I'll take the machine to OS 8.** and see what happens. As for the audio interface stuff, The only thing I worry about with the external setup would be latency problems.. I would think the firewire setup would work around that, but I don't know much about how a Mac deals with such things... Sorry to say, but I have much more experience on the PC when it comes to digital audio. I have a few standard PCI audio cards from my old PC stuff that I may mess around with first ( if I can find drivers for them.. ) but I'm leaning towards the external setup. Now if someone could drop a few hints on firewire interfaces, my life would be complete

Thanks again for the tips / advice / opinions ... it all helps much more than you may believe.

Take care now........ Tom