where to put firewire card?

[terpfan101]

My parents are going to get me an ipod for my 18th birthday. I wanted to know more about the firewire issue. I have both a new imac (my mom's) and a family windows cpu with windows xp. Since kazaa was used on the windows, i will be using the ipod on the windows for the time being. I don't have usb 2.0 nor do i have firewire already. If I buy the firewire card (either Adaptec 4300 or belkin that is available at apple) where should i put it? From the top down, the pci slots that I have are: monitor, ethernet, modem, sound card, wireless card for dsl. I am guessing to remove the ethernet and put the firewire in there since we use the wireless card in the fifth and final spot for dsl. Will in work in any spot? Which one do you all reccomend...belkin or adaptec? And both are six with power right? Thanks a lot!

[ashawley]

I recommend the Adaptec over the belkin big time. Even though Apple sells the Belkin, it doesn't mean it works well with PCs. They don't have the best experience with PCs remember.

I've seen issues w/the Apple recommended belkin but not w/the Adaptec.

The slot may not make a difference depending on your PC. If all slots are bus-powered you can stick it in any slot. If not, usually the first couple are (so, put it in the second slot after the video card).

One question though, you say that you're using the XP machine because of the fact that you downloaded the songs from Kazaa? You do know that it makes no difference where you got your MP3s from you could just copy them over to the Mac and use it to sync w/your iPod instead of the XP machine--it'd save you the firewire card cost. Just a thought.

Adam

[darkfusion]

Don't you have any spare PCI Slots? It should work fine in any of them. If you're running Win XP, just shutdown, unplug the power, stick the card in and then turn it on and you're ready to go!

6-Pin card's have large size port's, kind of standard USB size, and 4-Pin's have those 'lil tiny ports.

Oh and as for the Belkin thing, mine has had no problems from day one :)

[saratoga]

All PCI slots are powered. In theory all are identical, but some companies cut corners and do weird things with slots so in very rare cases shuffleing card helps. Though its been a few years since thats happened to me.

I just use generic firewire cards. They're basically all identical.

[ashawley]

With all do respect folks, the cards are not identical. You can do a search here for the hundreds of posts where folks have had problems with there cards where switching them has fixed the issue.

Yes, you can tinker and tinker and sometimes get them to work, but the time doing that is just not worth going out to get a good card.

Adam

[MonkeyMan9700]

just get hte cheapest firewire card possible then use that

[Shadow]

terpfan101, you could probably remove the modem too since you have DSL. Unless you use the modem as a backup in case DSL goes down for a while.

[saratoga]

With all do respect folks, the cards are not identical. You can do a search here for the hundreds of posts where folks have had problems with there cards where switching them has fixed the issue.

Same drivers, same chipsets. Most even follow reference designs. They're as close to indentical as you get. Regardless I don't put faith in anecdotes. They're usally wrong.

I wonder how many problems are solved simply becuase XP reinstalls the driver or the motherboard's ACPI gets another shot at detecting the card when its pulled out and then a new one is inserted.

[terpfan101]

I also talked to some friends at school today. The reason why I am not going to transfer them to my moms new imac is because itt is primarily her computer and I plan on getting a windows laptop when i go to college. Plus how would I transfer the songs to the imac? I don't want to burn so many cd's. Hence though I may just buy a generic card. I think I am also going to put the card in the slot by removing the ethernet card. Don't get me wrong, I love macs. I just like some things from the windows better and they are more compatible. I am writign from the imac now. She got it from fedex late last night. Man is it a beauty. 20inch screen is huge!!! It's also really fast and webpages load at roughly the same speed the windows load at. Safari is a kickass browser! Well thats just my plug, and i will be getting a pc laptop because of the compatibility, cost, and the few things that make it better. But the two IMO are even with different aspects pushing them over the top. Thanks again for all your help. ALSO IF anyone wants to suggest and firewire cards and can provide a link online that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and happy holidays!

[deftdrummer1]

Originally posted by MonkeyMan9700
just get the cheapest firewire card possible then use that i highly advise against doing this. You could easily get a no name firewire card from ebay for about $15 shipped but it could be your worst nightmare. The "you get what you pay for" saying goes for firewire cards as well. My parents got me a texas instruments firewire card for christmas last year for my xp machine and it has worked flawlessly since day 1. They aren't cheap however, running about $45-$50 at circuit city/best buy. Definetely worth every penny though for those times you want to quickly mount up load 3 songs and jet --no messing around unplugging and replugging begging for a connection

I suggest go the extra mile pay a little more