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Fire wire??

R

Rooney

Jan 5, 2006
164
0
Kenton, Oh
#1
This is the first thread I've started. So Hi all.

Got a question about firewire. I have searched on this and couldn't find anything.

How much of a setback is having only a four pin firewire connection on the pc or laptop? I'm looking at a mackie onyx 1640 and I assume it uses a 6 pin connection. Am I correct in this? Is there an adaptor to go from 4 to 6? It would be safe to assume that 6 pins can transmit more info faster than 4?

Aren't I full of assumptions? I hope a couple of them are wrong.:)
 
#2
I just got a firewire hard drive for my laptop. My laptop (as most/all pc laptops) doesn't have a 6-pin connections. I think mac laptops are the only ones that have the luxury of 6-pin connections. But my new drive works excellent with the 4-pin connection.

But as far as I understand/know, the only difference is power supply. 6-pin supplies (sufficient?) power, while 4-pin doesn't.

An example would be how the f/w works with an iPod. If you use a 4 pin, the iPod won't get charged, but a 6-pin charges the iPod. So if I'm not wrong, the two extra pins doesn't have anything with data transfer, but are only for extra power.

So, the 6-pin connection will be needed if you want to plug in a device to your computer and not have any power cords connected to it. I think a lot of soundcards works that way. (You have to use external power if you use a 4-pin connector, and not if you have a 6-pin connector.)

Bottom line:
I'm almost certain that using a 4-pin connection with the mackie won't affect the data transfer. A big device like that is (probably) externally powered, and should not require the power that a 6-pin connection delivers. You shouldn't need an adapter either. All you need is a f/w cable with a 4-pin in one end and a 6-pin in the other end. They shouldn't be too expensive or hard to find.

Alternatively, if things turn out that I'm completely wrong and that you need a 6-pin port, you could buy (for laptop) a PCMCIA card with 6-pin firewire connections.
 
#3
Jokke_v,

Thank you for the reply. I was happy to find that I had a firewire connection at all on my laptop last night. Once I figured out that there were two different configs I was a little concerned. Makes sense on two of the pins being a power source. But like you said, if worse comes to worse, I can upgrade my laptop to have the 6 pins.

Thanks for the info.

Rooney
 

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