PCI (not PCIe) support in Skylake Mboards / Firewire support and recommendations

[schpikster]

I'm looking to build a new Hackintosh around a Skylake CPU (probably the 6500 or 6600K CPU). I have an existing PCI firewire card which has worked well in my old hackitosh - it's based on a TI chipset and has worked flawlessly on my old hackintosh with my FW audio interface and logic, so i'd like to retain it if possible and avoid various thunderbolt and thunderbolt to firewire adapters.

I've found a few motherboards based on the Z170 chipset that have a PCI slot that I could make use of - is there any reason that this wouldn't work in OSX El Capitan (or the forthcoming Sierra)? My current mackintosh is OSX 10.6 so quite old.

Alternatively are there any PCIe Firewire cards based on the TI chipset that people have used and recommend?

Mike

 

[DrBEN]

The following sentence is WRONG.
I think most, perhaps all, firewire cards can be used in either port, PCIe or PCI. In some cases there may be reduced firewire speed.

Sorry, I was out in left field. I got PCIx confused with PCIe

"Most 32-bit PCI cards will function properly in 64-bit PCI-X slots, but the bus clock rate will be limited to the clock frequency of the slowest card, an inherent limitation of PCI's shared bus topology."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

 

[schpikster]

really? you can plug a PCI card into a PCIe slot?

 

[DrBEN]

really? you can plug a PCI card into a PCIe slot?

Oops. I was confused. PCI with PCIx can use the same slots, bit bus clock rate will fall to the card with the lowest rate.

"PCI and PCIe slots have a different height, different electronic connections, and the distance between the end of the motherboard (back of your computer) and the start of the slot is different. They also have "keys" or notches that are placed differently to ensure you don't screw it up. "

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/pci-card-in-pcie-slot.93449/ (Msg. 2)

 

[schpikster]

OK, so back to my earlier question - anyone know if PCI slots are supported in OSX on Skylake (Z170) motherboards?

 

[DrBEN]

oops

 

[amplifuzz]

OK, so back to my earlier question - anyone know if PCI slots are supported in OSX on Skylake (Z170) motherboards?

For what it's worth, the PCI slot in my Z97 Gigabyte mobo works without any tweaks or edits and it's currently housing a Firewire card as well. Don't know about Z170, though.

 

[schpikster]

My only slight concern is that from what I've read, the Z170 chipset doesn't natively support old school PCI - any manufacturers that provide a standard PCI slot on the board have some sort sort of way round it (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151) that i'm worried won't be supported in OSX

alternatively i could get a new PCIE firewire card, though then i'd be worried it wouldn't work as well - i think i lucked out with the PCI FW card i have as it's based on the TI chipset and has no issues in my current hackintosh build

 

[DMA]

My only slight concern is that from what I've read, the Z170 chipset doesn't natively support old school PCI - any manufacturers that provide a standard PCI slot on the board have some sort sort of way round it (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151) that i'm worried won't be supported in OSX

alternatively i could get a new PCIE firewire card, though then i'd be worried it wouldn't work as well - i think i lucked out with the PCI FW card i have as it's based on the TI chipset and has no issues in my current hackintosh build

Did you ever resolve this? I'm currently looking for a firewire card for exactly the same reason (old hardware with Logic). I would prefer a PCI card, as I only have 2 PCIe slots and would like to possibly use those for graphics card and wifi.

 

[schpikster]

Did you ever resolve this? I'm currently looking for a firewire card for exactly the same reason (old hardware with Logic). I would prefer a PCI card, as I only have 2 PCIe slots and would like to possibly use those for graphics card and wifi.

Yes, this worked - Firewire 400 works fine via a PCI (not PCIe) card in the single PCI slot on my motherboard. No drivers required in MacOS - plug and play.

I did experience a couple of issues initially though - the DMP profile of my RAM (which should operate at 3000MHz) caused audio clicks and pops. I've not tried entering timings manually, and in the meantime have just defaulted back to standard 2166MHz speed - which seems fast enough (for now at least!).

Also, one ongoing issue is that i seem to have a ground loop that's caused by the firewire cable. It's picking up electrical interference from the graphics card - not tested this in MacOS but it's happening in Windows. I'm going to try and 'lift' the ground by using a 6-pin to 4-pin firewire adapter and vice versa, though not convinced this will work as i expect the firewire cable is still shielded. Will keep you posted not the results - though if this doesn't work i'm not sure how to fix this. Incidentally, i didn't have this problem in my previous Hackintosh build, though to be fair I have a much beefier graphics card installed this time around (a currently unsupported in MacOS GTX1070) and the PCI firewire card has to be mounted adjacent to the graphics card now due to there only being one PCI slot.