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Firewire pcmcia adaptor
I’m looking at one of these cards to be able to pull video/audio into my laptop, which has USB 2 but not firewire. Have some questions. Do all of these cards require external power supply? Do they run without external power if needed, understanding they’ll probably be draining the battery quickly? Strangely none of the online retailers say this in the description. Also, there’s a Lacie 800 cardbus that has rates up to 800 Mbps, twice that of other cards I see that are at 400. Is it worth jumping up on the curve here or will the extra speed be utilized? The laptop is a Dell D600, 1.7Mhz, 1/2 gig ram.
thanks!
Steven J -
4 Replies
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Laptop firewire cards do not need an external power supply. AFAIK, they don’t have any significant drain on the laptop battery either.
Firewire 800 will do not good unless you have firewire 800 drive/enclose hooked up to it, which gives you no advantage when working with DV.
Gary
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BTW, USB 2.0 is a bit FASTER than firewire, so if your drive enclose has USB 2.0, use that instead of firewire.
Gary
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Thanks for the feedback. Also, should’ve mentioned that the reason I’m looking at firewire cards is we already have a high end audio interface that’s firewire. It’s certainly cheaper to buy an adaptor card than another audio unit. But it’s good to know that the firewire 800 won’t make any difference considering it’s double the money.
steven
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Also, note that USB2 is theoretically faster than firewire, but a drive connected to a Firewire port will still typically be faster than on a USB2 port. This is due to a few other aspects where Firewire has an advantage over USB.
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