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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / January 2008What are some good Firewire/USB PCI Cards for a Quicksilver 2002 Macintosh?
Hello all... I have a 2002 Quicksilver G4 Power Macintosh. Its onboard Firewire hardware is blown, and I'd like to replace it. In addition, I'd like to add USB 2.0 capability. Thus far I have tried several cards without much success. The first, a Sonnet Firewire PCI card that came with the machine, had a serious design flaw that came up any time I plugged in a Mac running in Firewire Target Disk Mode. Since I have a need to do that fairly often, this card wouldn't do at all. The next card I tried was an IOGear GUF320. The Firewire on this card worked perfectly, while the USB 2.0 support was extremely unstable. IOGear claimed the GUF320 was supported on the Mac, but their drivers haven't been touched since 2004, don't work on Mac OS X 10.4 and Apple's built in drivers don't really work right. And there's the small matter of some "test point" having been left functional on the card that causes Mac OS X to claim that an "EHCI root hub simulation" is drawing too much power and will be disabled. Most recently I tried a cheap no-name VIA-based Firewire and USB 2.0 card I had sitting around. The Firewire worked fine, but the USB 2.0 portion of the card is unstable and unpredictable enough in its operation that it too is unusable. So...what would be the best USB+Firewire 400 combo card out there? Would it be better to go with separate cards for each? Or is there just no good choice? William > Would it be better to go with separate cards for each? Combo (FireWire and USB) cards are pretty notorious for causing problems. Check the articles and user reports on controller cards at Accelerate Your Mac. <http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/firewire.html> For something like a PCI card, it's often worth the extra cost to buy from a retailer that tests for compatibility with Macs. I notice that OWC carries Iogear's GIC251U USB card but not the GUF combo card. <http://www.macsales.com/> I've had no problems with the Sabrent 400/800 FireWire card in my G5. It operates at 3.3 or 5 Volts, so it should also work in your Quicksilver. RE: << So...what would be the best USB+Firewire 400 combo card out there? Would it be better to go with separate cards for each? Or is there just no good choice? >> I would avoid the "combo" cards and install separate cards, one for Firewire, the other for PCI. I have a g4/1.25 MDD, and have a generic "no name" Firewire card and a Belkin USB2 card, and they both work fine. Be aware that you probably won't get the computer to go into "deep sleep" with PCI-based Firewire or USB cards, but this really isn't a problem for me. For USB2, I tried a couple of no-name cards, that just didn't work out as well. The Belkin costs a few bucks more, but has been trouble-free. - John |
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