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Extra 1394 card in G-5
To all you G-5 experts out there: on another, non bovine forum, a post said all the Firewire ports (400 and 800) work on the same bus, and having more than one device on that bus at the same time can cause problems like capture probs, or dropped frames etc.
In my case, G-5, dual 2.7, 4GB ram, PCI-X buss, I have a G-Raid (FW800) and my JVC HDV deck (FW400) running at the same time. I’ve had the occasional hiccup with the G-Raid, requiring a re-boot.
Is this true about being on the same bus, and if so, can I just add a PCI Firewire card for the deck, or do I need to find a PCI-X card?
It would go in Slot 2, all others are in use with Kona, Video card, and Atto raid card for another raid.
Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday.
Gary Morris McBeath
SaltAire Cinema Productions -
5 Replies
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[Piper] “on another, non bovine forum, a post said all the Firewire ports (400 and 800) work on the same bus, and having more than one device on that bus at the same time can cause problems like capture probs, or dropped frames etc. “
Yes, this is true. They do in fact share the same bus.
You can definitely get a cheap PCI FireWire card to isolate it on its own bus if you’re having problems with FW bus overload on the G5 native ports.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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Marco,
thanks,
Gary
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Another option is to install a second internal hard drive (it will be even faster then a firewire drive) and then use the external for backup.
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beware.
i have a g5 2.5 dual. i assume that you’re card slot configuration are similar if not the same to mine. 2 of the slots SHARE a bus (or at least share something in terms of bandwidth)and will run only as fast as the slowest card. check the apple site about the pci slot configuration as i can’t remember which slots.
i have the identical setup as in a capture card (fastest slot) a raid card and a FW 800 card. I had to pull the FW 800 card out as it caused the raid card to slow down to a crawl. I did a test as i could not believe what i was reading at the time. my 3 drive raid i set up went from 200MB/s (without fw card in shared slot) down to 46MB/s when i reinstalled said FW card. that’s slower than a ‘normal’ single drive!
it’s crazy that they gave us the slots and then sorta took one away anyway. the new mac pros running pci-xpress have solved the problem or so i’ve read as i have never tinkered with one.
fp
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Thanks guys,
Great ideas. I’ll research the slot configuration, because I’ve noticed my 8 drive raid is not running at the speed it should. And that’s without another FW card. Good info. I’ll get back with my results in a day or two.
Gary
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