Firewire question

[Phil A. Lefebvre]

At 11:27 AM -0800 1/24/03, Macintosh Digital Video List wrote:

>>My question is simple: Is that completely true? If I added a Firewire card
>>would it not work fine?
>>
>>Is it more a marketing ploy to get you to upgrade to a new system? My bets
>>are on the fact that a Firewire card would transfer DV footage just fine but
>>I wanted to know what others may have learned about that with their own
>>experiences.
>
>From: Ron Woodland <woodland at infowest.com>
>
>The beige G3 will accept a plug-in Firewire and/or USB card and work
>just fine...  No dropped frames in either capturing or printing to video.

Agreed. The FW/USB combo card works great in my Beige G3. It is not 
so much a marketing ploy as they are not 100% reliable. Upgrades are 
usually more troublesome than something built-in, and other companies 
don't want to bother supporting them. The same CompUSA combo card 
that works perfectly in my Beige G3 has a long thread on 
xlr8yourmac.com about how some cards wouldn't work at all.

>Older Macs, such as the 7100/7200/7500, 8500/8600, and 9500/9600 models
>also had PCI architecture, but they were built to version 1 specs.  They
>will not work with a Firewire/USB card.  You can install the card, but
>the system will not be able to see it and the drivers won't work.

Disagree. All PCI Macs have v2.0 or higher; Beige G3s have v2.1 PCI 
slots. There are many people with FireWire or USB or FW/USB combo 
cards working perfectly fine. My 8500 has a combo card from 
OrangeMicro that works great. However, DV editing is not as reliable 
as in a Beige G3, as it depends a lot on the software and hard drives 
you are using.
-- 
__________________________
Phil Lefebvre
Chicago, IL