Turtlerock Forum

New Apple Imacs only have 1 x 800 firewire port.
This sort of kills my next purchase. any other options?

If it's firewire 400 that you're after, I was just told at Sound Devices that you can use an adaptor cable.

Digi 003 needs 1 x fireport and the Duende needs it owns firewire port. They dont do piggy back.

...use a firewire adapter card??
or are imacs completely unexpandable?


other than that, you could always buy a beige PC with as many firewire ports as you need, and hackintosh it?
:-)

Apogee Ensemble won't work at all on my iMac if there is a drive plugged into the 800 port while the Ensemble in in the 400 port. Looks like the iMac is no good for Logic and Apogee Ensemble which is a real shame, the Ensemble is a fantastic interface.

I seriously need to upgrade my Mac. Even one of the so called gurus in the Apple center
in the city could not advise me properly.

In the end, if you want any of the following:

Dedicated audio disk
multichannel FW interface
optional duende/coprocessor/uad/etc

all running together or in combination (pick any two)

Then an imac will never be for you.

I have heard of setups with a second FW disk working with
a multichannel interface, but add a duende and you will
overload the buss, no matter what it says on the box.

The only way to get all the services you
want is to get a Mac Pro and add a second FW card and
add disks to your drive bay.

I would love to hear from anybody who can get
all the above working simultaneously on an imac as it would save
me a bag of money!


rachel

I'm running an Mbox2 and an Iomega HD external drive on the last version of the iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4Ghz).
Not close to what you are trying to achieve I admit.

Thirteen wrote:Apogee Ensemble won't work at all on my iMac if there is a drive plugged into the 800 port while the Ensemble in in the 400 port. Looks like the iMac is no good for Logic and Apogee Ensemble which is a real shame, the Ensemble is a fantastic interface.

I'm doing this all the time without any problems. HD on FW800 and Ensemble on FW400 works fine.
I did have a digital crack happening for a time but I found I had the work clock button engaged. Works fine now.

nIC

Aearth wrote:

Thirteen wrote:Apogee Ensemble won't work at all on my iMac if there is a drive plugged into the 800 port while the Ensemble in in the 400 port. Looks like the iMac is no good for Logic and Apogee Ensemble which is a real shame, the Ensemble is a fantastic interface.

I'm doing this all the time without any problems. HD on FW800 and Ensemble on FW400 works fine.
I did have a digital crack happening for a time but I found I had the work clock button engaged. Works fine now.

nIC

I will have to do some experimenting... I am using a dual 2.8, if there is a drive plugged into the 800 port the Ensemble LED changes colour and it drops communication with the Mac.

You might want to check out this thread on the RME forum. http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1475

The trouble seems to have started when Apple switched from Texas Instrument Firewire Chips to Agere ones. If you hold Apple+S down while booting you can determine which firewire chip is in your mac.

You want to go to the Apogee site and download the latest software updates including the firmware (I think that is what it's called).
Where's Smash when you want him.

nIC

this is exapandable...

http://www.turtlerockmastering.com/foru ... 7539#17539

I am about to buy a new iMac and wondered the same thing.

I found this option on the net: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=193449.

Apple's site also shows this: http://guide.apple.com/action.lasso?-database=macosguide&-layout=cgi_detail&-response=/ussearch/detail.html&prodkey=109115&-search

Either of these or similar products could be a solution. What do you think?

and this Firewire 800 hub:

https://www.lindy.com.au/online/arrshop.exe?anonymous=true&cat=ea

cheers.

Last post on this!

Regarding conflicts and shared bandwith etc, tt seems that it shouldn't really matter. Talking to a reputable audio store in Melbourne about this issue yesterday and I was assured that the last iMac shared the same output anyway. As in the 400 drew from the 800 at any rate. So with the new iMac, you should be able to connect an external hard disc to the 800, and another device to the hardisc. At least, that's what I'll be doing.

cheers