Jim Gunn
February 11th, 2004, 09:44 PM
Do four or five (external) port pci firewire cards exist and does anyone know where to order one? I currently have a two port firewire card that came with my new desktop connecting to a video tape deck and also a three port firewire card in another slot connecting to three external hard drives. But I need to consolidate these to one pci firewire card with either four or five ports so I can free up a pci slot for a Linksys wirelesss card adapter. Anyone have a url or other suggestion?
Jeff Donald
February 11th, 2004, 09:55 PM
Can't you daisy chain some of the FireWire devices or use a hub?
Rob Lohman
February 12th, 2004, 03:49 PM
My Maxtor firewire harddisk comes with two firewire ports so I
can chain more units. Doesn't yours? I think there is a firewire
"hub", but those are quite expensive I believe. The most ports
I've seen on a card is 3.
Jim Gunn
February 12th, 2004, 07:56 PM
Thanks for the suggestions. I use my three external firewire drives and firewire videotape deck for video editing , so I'm loathe to daisy chain them together for fear they will slow down and drop frames. (I've never tried.) But 6-port firewire hubs are reasonably priced so I'm bidding on one on E-bay now.
Jeff Donald
February 12th, 2004, 08:45 PM
I think hubs are more likely to drop frames than daisy chaining the drives together. I daisy chain drive frequently and rarely have problems. The problems are usually from the drives being too full and not the daisy chain (at least that's my theory).