CM and Matt, the G5 machines all of them, the firewire 400 and 800 are definitely on just one bus. You can check this in "more info" after clicking "about this mac" on the blue apple top left of the screen - under firewire. I've also seen apple tech document confirming this some time ago sorry don't have the link. Further, if you plug in an 800 device with a 400 device the bus drops to 400 specs and speed. If you want your audio device and hard drive on separate bus (which I personally have found is the only way to do it) then you have to buy a PCI firewire card - just a 400 cheap one should do it - plug your audio device into that, and use the 800 on your G5 for your fw800 drive. Don't plug any other fw devices into the mac unless they are 800, or it will revert to 400, and sometimes if the drive is running and you do that - bad news. It's a very poor design of the G5's IMO for a pro machine top of the line to skimp on a small detail like that - one fw bus. At the time, there were no PCI cards either which was a big let down. Anyway I'm not sure about the mac pro's but I think they are the same story.

Miklos.

Hi Miklos..

Problem is I cannot connect my external HD via firewire800- only 400. Same goes for my audio interface, the M-Audio Firewire410, which has only 2 400 ports.

Matt

miklos, this is an interesting information, thank you. i always thought there are two controllers, but as you say there is only an additional FW400 connector ... strange design ...
finally that means the FW400 audio interface is also only connected to a dropped down 1394b-bus - here we might have to find a reason ...
christian

Yes cm, it's only a connector, not another bus, which is indeed a strange design and one can only put it down to some weird senseless minimal cost cutting idea - it's so backwards, it's like using a cheap latch on the door to your bmw.

Matt: if both your devices are 400, once again the pci fw400 card would probably fix the problem as you can plug one device into the 400 port of your G5 (one bus) and the other device into the pci card, which way you do it is up to you. My set up is[:O]ne fw 800 drive in bus one of the g5, one pci fw 800 card with two more drives running at fw800, and my audio interface on a third fw400 card. You can plug fw 400 devices into an 800 chain or device and it should revert to fw400 spec, but you cannot obviously do the reverse.

Hope that helps,
Miklos.

to add an info you might have missed ... on the RME-audio website there is an interesting information about compatibilities - as usual they provide some in-depth information
christian

cm, there's actually only one FW bus on Macs. If you use a 400 device, the 800 bus slows down. It is strange, I agree - what's the point of 800 in that case?

Hehe.

A day late and a dollar short. Sorry about that.


[:O]ops:

Nick: basically if you look at it this way, the G5's have a fw800 bus on them, which is backwards compatible with fw400. It will run fw800, but if you plug something in to it which is 400, it will revert to the old spec, for backwards compatibility. So it is still worthwhile as an 800, but you just can't run different spec devices on the same bus. You have to install other buses to do that. Even then, if you only had fw800, and it says you can run a million or whatever number of devices off that bus - it's not true, in my experience, don't run more than 2 drives on any one bus (no matter how many ports it has), don't mix and match your specs, which anyway is bad because you lose the speed of any 800 devices there, and don't mix and match your devices *on any one bus*, you CAN have audio devices, hard drives, cameras - whatever as long as each type of device is on a separate bus, and even then, don't mix cameras on the same bus - just one per bus is enough. That's my experience anyway since dealing with fw for many years on macs.

Miklos.

Miklos,

How likely do you think having my audio interface and external HD each on a different bus will solve the crackling and popping? I've ordered more RAM, which should bring it up to 3.5GB - if that doesn't solve the problem I will get a PCI firewire card...I mean I could do that anyway, because from what you guys are saying it's a much safer way and ensures that there are no crosspath data issues between the HD and audio interface.

Matt

I'm not sure RAM is the culprit, unless you are trying to do too much.

I was using Nuendo on a G5 Dual 2g and some firewire drives with only 2.5g memory. I ran maybe 5 VIs at once. No problems.

Now I'm on two new Intel Macs. The Mac Mini is running with 2gs and the SAME DRIVES as I've had for VSL. Now I'm getting clicks and pops just playing one instrument at a time.

TH

Hey guys...put more RAM in and am still having the same crackling/popping noise as before...will probs keep the RAM in there as it will most definitely come in handy in the future......anyway, now onto plan B.

Can anyone recommend a reliable PCI Firewire card I can put in to my Apple TowerMac G5? What do you guys think about this...

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=151938# ?

Thanks,

Matt

I tried to setup a client with an m-audio 410 and found it to be absolute garbage. Sorry, but that was my experience. The drivers were dreadful and I had nothing but problems. The client took it back and swapped it for a motu device (can't remember which, Traveller, I think) and all was fine.

I'm running an RME DIGI96/8 card in my G5 (PCI-X, not express) and it's been great.

J.

You have to check that it is the right version for your mac IE pciX or express - I get confused as to which machine has which and what works with what BUT in my machine, which is a first generation 2.0 dual cpu G5, I have 1X PCI Firewire 800 and 1X PCI firewire 400 cards installed, both work great no problems at all - each one has three PORTS (but ONLY ONE BUS for the three ports this is important to remember don't get fooled by a single bus with lots of ports, still just one bus) - both of these cards are LACIE - I recommend them, they are very cheap, simple, nothing to configure, just stick them in the G5, close the hatch, power up and they're there, simple as that. No problems at all for me. Connected to those I have a number of 800 drives on the 800 card, 400 card has my audio interface and I have another 800 drive plugged into the G5 built in firewire (with no other devices on that bus). All works very well now.

Miklos.

Hi Miklos,

I've checked my mac out and it has PCI-X slots...this Firewire PCI card looks ok-

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/allegro400.html

Matt

I don't know that one, all I can say is that I can only recommend the Lacie cards - and any mac store I've been too has done the same, I believe there are some problems with some cards, the one you linked to - I don't know, but I know for me the Lacies have had no problems at all and I have two of them in the same box - a fw400 and fw800. Also they're cheap, simple no fuss and do the job. I would recommend going with the name brand on something like this, it's not like an audio interface where the difference is subjective or preferential, anyway, just my advice.

Miklos.

Thing is...the Lacie firewire pci card is not compatible with g5's that hold pci-x slots...check it out:

http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=10085

Matt

I thought they had both express and pci X? I am sure my G5 has pci-X I know it's not express. I could be wrong. Anyway, good luck with it that's the extent of my knowledge on the matter - sorry.

Miklos.

hmmm..well if you have that card you must have neither pci-x nor pci express slots...according to their website anyway!

thanks for your help,

matt

has to be one of the two - it's a g5 dual processor 2.0, the only ones with the old pci slots were the first gen 1.8 single processor machines.

how odd...because i have a first gen 1.8 single processor and according to apple in their support section, the g5's with 8 dimm slots (which mine has) are pci-x :S ...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86790