Keyspan FireWire Card
Price: $99.00
Requirements: MacOS 8.6 or later, QuickTime Pro (required for use with Keyspan DV Capture Utility for video editing), an available Cardbus slot (aka 32 bit Type II PC Card slot )
Date of Review: March. 10, 2001
Rating: (4.5 out of 5 stars)

Feeling left out of the transition from SCSI to FireWire because you have a middle-aged Mac? There’s no need to remain on the sidelines, if your computer has an open PCI slot or CardBus PC Card slot. Reasonably priced adapters are available that will open up the world of FireWire CD-R burners, hard drives, DV camcorders, and other devices for you.

While SCSI has served the Mac community well for more than 15 years as a fast peripheral connectivity protocol, it is a cranky and idiosyncratic interface that has caused untold hours of hair-tearing frustration for many users. It is not hot-pluggable, only supports a handful of daisy-chained devices, and requires big cables with bulky connectors, device ID configuration, and termination. When it works, SCSI works well, but that’s a big “if.”

FireWire promises both speed and user-friendliness, is hot- pluggable, can daisy-chain up to 63 devices — far more than 99+ percent of users would ever imagine connecting. It uses small cables with compact connectors, and also supports bus powered devices, which SCSI doesn’t. I’m relatively new to FireWire myself, but take it from me, it makes SCSI look medieval. FireWire is also, interestingly, technology developed by Apple that has been adopted by the PC side as the IEEE 1394a specification. Oh, those zany PC folks. “IEEE 1394a” just rolls mellifluously off the tongue, doesn’t it?

FireWire cable connectors are either 4 pin or 6 pin. 6 pin connectors are generally used on FireWire devices that draw power from the FireWire bus thus theoretically eliminating the need for external power supplies and power cords to these devices. 6 pin devices are generally hard drives, CD-R drives, analog to DV video converters, and others. Although 6 pin devices can draw power from the FireWire bus, some FireWire devices still have external power supplies and power cords. Which is good, because the bus powered Que! M2 external FireWire hard drive I tested with these adapters would not power up through either of the PC Cards. I had to use the external power brick. (It powered up nicely with the MacAlly PCI to FireWire adapter though — see below).

Four-pin connectors are generally used on FireWire devices that do not draw power from the FireWire bus. These 4-pin devices usually need external power supplies, internal batteries, and/or power cords to these devices. Four-pin devices are generally DV camcorders.

The subjects of this review are three products that provide FireWire support for the last generation of pre-FireWire Macs. Two are CardBus PC cards: the Keyspan FireWire Card and the MacAlly PC Card to FireWire adapter, which support G3 Series PowerBooks.

CardBus is the most recent PC Card standard that doubles the interface between the PC Card slot and the PowerBook’s motherboard from 16-bit to 32-bit. This enables CardBus PC Cards to offer much higher performance and more respectable data transfer rates with attached devices.

The PowerBook 3400 and 3500 (Original G3) can be upgraded to support CardBus by a Mac Components Engineered.

The third product is the MacAlly PCI to FireWire Card, which brings FireWire support to desktop Macs with PCI slots.

I tested the two PC cards in two different PowerBooks — a WallStreet 233 MHz and a Lombard 333 MHz. The PCI adapter was tested in a UMAX SuperMac S-900 6-slot tower with a 200 MHz PPC 604e processor.

The Keyspan FireWire Cardbus Card package includes:
The Keyspan FireWire Cardbus Card
A CardBus to 6-pin FireWire dongle and 4-pin FireWire cord
Mac compatible CD with software and electronic user manual (html)
QuickTime Pro Registration and Information Sheet

The bundled CD contains installers (live Internet connection required for FireWire drivers) for: (1) Keyspan Video Capture. The “Keyspan Video Capture” selection only installs the Keyspan DV Capture Utility. This program will not work if you have not already installed the Apple FireWire Drivers and QuickTime Pro. (2) Apple FireWire Drivers. The “Apple FireWire Drivers” selection only installs the Apple FireWire Drivers. (3) QuickTime Pro. Since I have no digital camera or camcorder, and already have a later version of QuickTime installed, I ran only the FireWire support software installer for Mac OS 9 to download the latest FireWire drivers available from Apple’s website, which turned out to be version 2.5.

The FireWire PC card itself connects to a rather fat dongle cord and connector with a single, female port. As with the new, single FireWire port in the new PowerBook G4, one port is really no hardship with FireWire, since the interface daisy-chains so nicely.

System requirements: The Keyspan FireWire Cardbus PCI Card requires the following:
Mac OS 8.6 or later
QuickTime Pro (required for use with Keyspan DV Capture Utility for video editing)
An available Cardbus slot (aka 32 bit Type II PC Card slot )

Features:
Delivers up to 400 Mbps data transfer rate
Five year warranty

The Keyspan FireWire Card worked well with both PowerBooks, including the Lombard running Mac OS X. We tested it with both the aforementioned Que! M2 hard drive, and a QueFire! 16x10x40x CD-RW drive, and both devices performed fine through the KeySpan card. The Keyspan FireWire Card has a MSRP of $99, but I found it at Web resellers as low as $78.25.