FireWire port jigsaw puzzle

[benwiggy]

I'm trying to work out how to connect all my FireWire peripherals to my new computer, and thought someone here might have some advice. Here's the details:

My current setup is a 2006 iMac with 2 x FW400 ports. I have 3 FireWire peripherals: my G-Drive; my FA-66 audio/midi box; and my EPSON 4990 scanner. I have an old Apple Cinema Display which includes 2 x FW400 ports as a hub, after you plug a connector into one of the iMac's FW ports. This gives me 3 ports in total, so everything fits. The G-Drive and the audio box are currently bus-powered.

Now, I've just bought a new MacMini. It has 1 x FW800 port. The G-Drive has FW800 ports on it, so I'd like to take advantage of the higher 800 speed on that drive, which means not using the drive through the Display's FW400 hub, as I currently do.

The G-Drive does have 2 FW ports, so I could daisy-chain the audio box through the drive? But am I right that daisy-chaining uses the slowest speed throughout the chain? Or I've also read that it splits the throughput between devices? Does bus-powering still work well through chaining?

To confuse matters more, I've also bought another FW external drive, though that will replace the G-Drive eventually, though it might be nice to have them both online for a while (Western Digital MyBook 3TB). The MyBook also has 2 x FW800, so again I could daisy-chain the G-Drive, the MyBook, with the audio box on the end? I'm guessing things get more flakey the more devices you have in the chain.

(I know some of these devices can use USB instead --though not always bus-powered, and I'm biased towards FW. The EPSON scanner also has USB, so that's not critical. But then on USB I've already got untold devices!)

I'm still waiting for the new Mac to be delivered, so I can't test it yet, and want to know if I need to buy any peripherals or cables. I guess the only other option is to get a FireWire 800 hub.

Anyone have any experience/recommendations for hubs or daisy-chaining?

[benwiggy]

Gosh, what a lot of answers! Should anyone be interested, here's what I've discovered:

I have daisy chained three devices from the MacMini's one FW port: first the WD MyBook, then the G-drive, and then the FA-66 audio box. The MacMini can happily bus-power the G-drive and the FA-66.
The WD 3TB drive runs at 800 speed, presumably because it has its own power supply.

The G-Drive runs at 400 speed, presumably because it's in a chain and not externally powered. (The FA-66 audio/midi box can only run at FW400 -- it doesn't need that much bandwidth for audio.)

Interestingly, my old 2006 iMac would keep power to FW devices even when it was shutdown. The new MacMini does not, and the power lights on the bus-powered devices go out when the mini is shutdown.

[mnewman]

Quote: Originally Posted by benwiggy Gosh, what a lot of answers!

Maybe not so many people using FireWire devices anymore. My last FireWire drive was from LaCie. It crapped out several years ago. I finally scrapped my FireWire iSight and replaced it with a much higher resolution USB camera.

It was always almost impossible to find FireWire stuff here in Thailand. Like you, I was biased toward FireWire. But, its non-availability kind of forced me to move to other standards.

[benwiggy]

FireWire still, for my money, offers a lot of advantages over other interfaces:

Most hard drives are currently either USB 2 or FW. If you run USB2, that's much slower than FW800, and USB2 isn't great at powering devices over the bus. Bus-powering is important as I've got more than enough power bricks, and I have to take some of the kit with my laptop sometimes.

For audio/midi interfaces, there's no bus-powered device on USB with the features that FireWire boxes currently have, e.g. number of input/output.

Thunderbolt is still far too expensive, and there aren't many USB3 devices yet. I imagine that TB and USB3 will take over, but for now: FireWire fills a gap that I need.

[NovaScotian]

Particularly true if you run devices of varying age as I do. FW is still fairly common.

[mnewman]

I agree on the technology. It's just that FW never gained any popularity here in Thailand. That may be because Apple didn't gain market traction until after the iPhone was released. The cheap generic PCs that most people bought came with USB and that's it.

I just did a quick check of Thai online retailers and found a total of just four FW external drives on offer; two from Western Digital and two from Buffalo. All of those also have USB ports. I couldn't find a single external bare FW enclosure.