The FireWire 800/400 card to own for 100% compatibility

[axialbass]

Hey people,

So I a bit confused by a lot of this thread, well most of it ha. But i'm intending to get a PCI fire wire card for my Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H. I only have the 1 PCI port left so has to be a PCI card. I sore on the build below that the DeLock PCI FireWire 400 1394a 3+1 works fine. Tho I'm worried it might not work to its full potential, you recon I'll be fine with it?


Here is the post that put me on to the card,
http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/143450-success-i5-4460-ga-z97m-d3h-hd4600-8gb-ram.html


and this is my set up;

OS - Yosemite
Mother Boad - Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H Socket LGA 1150 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio mATX
CPU -Core i7 4790K 4GHz Socket 1150 8MB L3 Cache
Graphics - EVGA GTX 750 Ti SuperClocked 2GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E
Wifi- TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Wireless-N450 Dual Band PCIe Adapter
Power -Corsair CSM 550W Semi Modular 80+ Gold
System drive - Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO - SSD Only
Ram - Ballistix 240-pin DIMM DDR3-1600 CL9 (9-9-9-24) PC3-12800
Storage drive - Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache

 

[nivekc711]

I just recently got this for my customac running El Capitan and I can't seem to get it to work. Any advice appreciated!

 

[budz]

roisto - Thanks so much for posting your experience. I've also just purchased an LSI FW643 chipset card - this is an HP card with 2x FW800 ports and possibly an internal header for another FW400 port (not sure, haven't looked into this too much as I don't need the FW400 port). I picked up this card for a lot less than the Startech

I only tried the card in a 4x PCI-e slot (the one furthest from the CPU slot) on my Z87X-D3H and it booted fine, worked first time, detected fine in 10.8.5 with no fiddling needed.

I have only tested a FW800 hard drive (seagate) so far, plugged it in while my machine was on and it worked absolutely great.

-edit- I should also mention I am using UEFI Clover to boot Mountain Lion.

 

[simonsaba]

Just purchased a StarTech.com FireWire Card PEX1349A2V with two FireWire 400 ports. Did not need a FireWire 800 port. I initially installed it in the PCI EX 1_1 and 1_2 slots. System Information showed the card existed but my video camera (Canon ZR850) was not recognized. I moved the card to the PCI Ex4 slot and when I booted, it recognized the camera. I'm now able to import video and audio.

GigaByte GA-Z97-HD3 Motherboard
16 GB RAM
Intel Core I7-4790
IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter (Apple Wireless keyboard and trackpad)
El Capitan

 

[osirhc]

OK...I've been reading through this thread and I want to make sure I understand everything.

Is this card still the go to FireWire card for 100% compatibility?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WCT5HK/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

If so, will it work with Z97 motherboards and other UEFI motherboards? Some people have said it will only work with older BIOS motherboards. The reason I ask is because my ASRock Z97 Anniversary doesn't have a UEFI only or Legacy BIOS mode I can set it to - this gave me issues initially installing OS X 10.11.3 until I found a guide to fix it on here.

I have a 2TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 external hard drive I used with my MacBook Pro for years as a backup drive. There's a lot of media I'd like to get off of it, but I'd also like to use it as a secondary system backup drive as well. USB 2.0 is just so slow, I'd love to get a FireWire 800 port working on my system. Can anyone confirm/deny that this card I mentioned above will work for me using a UEFI Z97 motherboard on 10.11.3? Although it's a bit more than I'd like to spend, I don't mind spending $65 on a card if it'll work right out of the box. The specs for my build are listed in my signature (iHac14,2/Main Rig)

EDIT

I found this at my local Micro Center, it says it's PC and Mac compatible. Think it would work for a Hack too? https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=RnYyMzROcGRLNEZDd19VUXpjb1RkWDFPZHplQTh3

 

[budz]

OK...I've been reading through this thread and I want to make sure I understand everything.

Is this card still the go to FireWire card for 100% compatibility?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WCT5HK/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

If so, will it work with Z97 motherboards and other UEFI motherboards? Some people have said it will only work with older BIOS motherboards. The reason I ask is because my ASRock Z97 Anniversary doesn't have a UEFI only or Legacy BIOS mode I can set it to - this gave me issues initially installing OS X 10.11.3 until I found a guide to fix it on here.

I have a 2TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 external hard drive I used with my MacBook Pro for years as a backup drive. There's a lot of media I'd like to get off of it, but I'd also like to use it as a secondary system backup drive as well. USB 2.0 is just so slow, I'd love to get a FireWire 800 port working on my system. Can anyone confirm/deny that this card I mentioned above will work for me using a UEFI Z97 motherboard on 10.11.3? Although it's a bit more than I'd like to spend, I don't mind spending $65 on a card if it'll work right out of the box. The specs for my build are listed in my signature (iHac14,2/Main Rig)

EDIT

I found this at my local Micro Center, it says it's PC and Mac compatible. Think it would work for a Hack too? https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=RnYyMzROcGRLNEZDd19VUXpjb1RkWDFPZHplQTh3

I'm not sure there is any '100% compatible' card. The thread title may have been correct at one time but it's not so correct now. I'm personally using a card with the same chipset as the Startech (LSI fw643) in a 4x PCI-e slot on a Z87 board, running Clover UEFI.

The card you linked is a PCI (not PCI-e) card, probably with TI chipset. Even it works, on your Z97 board, PCI is bridged, afaik similar to using a PCI-e card with bridged PCI FW chipset like the Syba card linked by many people in this thread.

When you use a bridged FW chip, it's not necessarily worse for your needs, although overall you don't get as much throughput.

 

[osirhc]

I'm not sure there is any '100% compatible' card. The thread title may have been correct at one time but it's not so correct now. I'm personally using a card with the same chipset as the Startech (LSI fw643) in a 4x PCI-e slot on a Z87 board, running Clover UEFI.

The card you linked is a PCI (not PCI-e) card, probably with TI chipset. Even it works, on your Z97 board, PCI is bridged, afaik similar to using a PCI-e card with bridged PCI FW chipset like the Syba card linked by many people in this thread.

When you use a bridged FW chip, it's not necessarily worse for your needs, although overall you don't get as much throughput.

So it would probably be best to get a PCIe card? This way my dedicated GPU in my PCIx16 slot won't have to share anything with the PCI FW card, right?

 

[acaballerob]

I'd just found a guy selling a firewire pci card removed from a Powermac G4, and it has the TSB41AB3 Texas Instrument chip. I'm wondering if it would work on a Hackintosh. I have a gigabyte h87 MB. Any thoughts?

 

[andifall]

For anybody looking for a PCI card instead of PCIe (I had no slots left) I took a punt on the StarTech PCI1394MP and I've currently found no issues. I'm on El Capitan with the Customac Pro (Feb 2016) setup.

Here is the link for those in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00006B8EQ/?tag=tonymacx86-21

I am routing an M-Audio Profire 610 for music and there seems to be no issues with latency in or out. I am one very happy camper right now!

 

[tonelab77]

Anyone else having issues with the LSI FW643 cards on Gigabyte's (or any manufacturer's) Z170 motherboards? I have GA-Z170-HD3P and it won't post (beep), and won't do anything. This card works great in other machines. I don't get it. Gigabyte doesn't know either. Said they would advise bios team for a patched bios or something (I won't hold my breath). I need FW!