Hello all.

Well, that Firewire/USB 2.0 card does not work on  my Beige G3 DT.  The firewire 
works, but the usb doesn't work at all in either OS X and or 9. By the way, I'm 
running Panther on the machine now and it's great!  But I was trying to combine 
Firewire and USB in one card.  I don't need USB 2.0.  I just need "regular" USB. Is 
there a cheapo card out there that anyone has found that works in a beige mac running 
panther or jaguar?  I wonder, is it the 2.0 on the USB that "breaks" this card on my 
comp. whereas if it weren't 2.0, it would work.  
Thanks for that posting Jeff. That was most helpful. What makes it confusing with that 
seller also is that they elsewhere sell a combo card with "one" chipset and they tout 
that as the advantage that it has over other cards.  The reason I need the combo card 
is because I only have one PCI slot available for them.  

Also, have the issues that Panther had with Firewire been resolved.  It was able to 
mount my external firewire drive (LaCie 120GB) but it kept having problems 
transferring files and it would freeze the computer.  Finally, it said the drive 
needed to be repaired but neither diskwarrior in OS 9 nor Disk Utility in OS X could 
repair it so I reformatted it.  I'm wondering this happened b/c the card was 
incompatible with my machine or is the Panther still having issues with Firewire?


-Felix



    From past thread:

Hello. Does anyone know if a combo card is supposed to work with a Mac even if
    it does not mention Mac compatibilty. In particular, there is one that has two
    onboard chipsets which is supposed to give better performace than ones with
    only a single chipset. It's a Firewire/USB 2.0 card and can be cound here:

    Here is the long description:

    And here's the URL: 
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3456937503&category=44933

    Thanks for any input.

    -Felix


    Long Description of Product:



    NEW! 4 Port USB 2.0 / Firewire IEEE 1394 PCI Card Adapter !

    What sets our card apart from the rest on ebay and most store brands? Unlike
    other USB/Firewire combo cards such as OrangeMicro, VST, and BELKIN, our
    cards use two different onboard chipsets to operate the USB 2.0 and Firewire
    functions. Now what does this mean to you? Basically it means the card will not
    have any conflicts with itself or share bandwidth between the USB and Firewire
    ports. Other cards only use one chipset and hope you wont notice if some of
    your firewire speed drop slightly while a USB device is plugged in. 


>From Jeff:


I'm running a bit behind this week, so I hope noone will mind if I'm answering old 
questions. I couldn't let this one go.

The stuff written by this Ebay seller is complete BS. Either through ignorance or 
through intent to deceive he's feeding his customers a load of trail patties.

*Every* combo card is built with multiple chip sets. It works like this. The clever 
chip designers design single chip systems which will support USB and single chip 
systems which will support Firewire. These chips have the PCI interface on one side 
and the intended function on the other side. There's really not much more to those 
types of cards.

A combo card puts two or more of these chips on a single card. However, in order to 
make one PCI slot support two or three or four chips each of which want their own PCI 
slot, the combo card also has what is called a PCI-PCI Bridge chip on board. All of 
the devices on one of those cards is communicating through that PCI-PCI Bridge and 
through the single PCI slot in which the card is plugged. How could it be otherwise? 
Do his cards magically get more bandwidth some how? They're still plugged into just 
one slot.

Now if he claimed to be using a better PCI--PCI Bridge or a special USB or special 
Firewire chipset that would be something. But the volume on those items must be so 
high, that there is no way that just one company is selling all of a single model. 
Just a few chip makers develop and sell those chipsets and then sell them to as many 
card sellers as they possibly can.

Jeff Walther

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