OWC Mercury FireWire 800 3 Port PCI Card
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $79.95
http://www.macsales.com
When Apple introduced Macintosh computers with the new FireWire 800 standard, my first thought was GOOD! Faster transfer speeds! Then I thought, shoot, I only have two FireWire 400 ports. How can I expand my Mac to FW800? Enter: The OWC Mercury FireWire 800 PCI card.
The Mercury FireWire 800 PCI card sports three FireWire 800 ports. It is easy to install. In fact, there is no drivers needed, thus no software to install. Unfortunately, the OWC Mercury FireWire 800 card only works under Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later. So for those OS 9 users out there, this is simply yet another wake-up call to make the switch of OS X.
The promise of FireWire 800 is speed. This PCI card, however, will not let you transfer data any faster than a FireWire 400 drive. The problem is not the card, but the PCI BUS. Which begs the questions; if you need the speed of FireWire 800, and this card does not deliver that, why buy the card?
Putting that question aside, the card itself does function well. I had no problem at all with the card, and in fact appreciate OWC making FireWire 800 available for older Mac computers. Here are the specifications on the OWC Mercury FireWire 800 PCI card from the company site:
System Requirements: Macintosh with 33-MHz/64-bit PCI slot. Power Macintosh Blue & White G3* or later, all AGP Power Macintosh G4 systems fully supported. FireWire 800 requires Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later, Mac OS X 10.2.5 or higher recommended. FireWire 800 is NOT supported under Mac OS 9.
FireWire 400: Must use 9 pin to 6 pin adapter cable (not included). Macintosh with 33-MHz/32-bit PCI slot. FireWire 400 requires Mac OS 8.6 or later. If used in a 33-MHz/32-bit PCI slot, FireWire 400 speed will be maximum attainable.
FireWire 800 (1394B), backwards compatible with FireWire 400 (1394A)
FireWire 800 – (3) 9 pin ports
PCI Slot Requirements – PCI 2.2 compliant PCI slot, 33-MHz/64-bit recommended for best performance.
One-Year Warranty
All told, if you have a need for a FireWire 800 card, and are running Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later, you will be happy with this card. It performs as well as it can with the inherent limitations of a PCI slot, so keep that in mind. I like the card, and can see uses for it. On the other hand, a better solution would be a combo-USB 2.0 / FW800 PCI card in the same price range.
MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5
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