FireWire2Go PCMCIA Card & Lombard Support?

C

Centurion2001

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I read somewhere that no drivers are needed for the FireWire2Go PCMCIA card. Any experience with this module. I have the card and want to purchase some peripherals but debating on sCSI and Firewire burners for my Lombard.
 
I've used my Firewire 2 Go card in my Lombard 333/DVD/192 MB RAM with a Que Firewire CD burner. I'm running 10.0.4. The only problems I had were quite a few buffer underrun errors at any speeds greater than 4x (may very well be the fault of the burner...the owner of the burner has lots of problems with it). The other major problem is that 10.0.4 doesn't support hot swapping of PC Cards yet, so inserting and ejecting the card while the machine's running can cause a kernel panic. Booting the machine with the card inserted and never removing it seems to work just fine though.
 
Did you need to use any drivers or does OSX recognize the card? Does it show up on the desktop like other PCMCIA cards on pre OSX?

Is OSX tolerable on your Lombard? I have the 400 model with plenty of ram.

Thanks
 
OK, let me try to answer your questions in order here. The card works without any 3rd party drivers. Plug it in and OSX sees it as a native firewire bus, almost. Before I got my hands on a FireWire burner, I wasn't sure if the card would work or not. OSX gave no indication it even knew the card was there. System profiler didn't list it or anything. So I guess that answers your question about the card showing up on the desktop. As far as I know OSX currently doesn't deal with PC cards all that well. No hot swapping, they don't show up on the desktop, etc. Luckily all that's supposed to change with 10.1. It's not a big problem either way...I just plugged the firewire burner in and OSX saw it just fine.

As for usability on my machine....I've been using it as my primary OS since March. Granted, it runs kind of slow. Apps take a while to open, the Finder is very slow, menu access is pretty slow. It's a little irritating, but bearable. My friend's got an iMac 450 (I think) and the only place I notice a difference is in 3D apps. I can't even use the built in screen saver because it's too slow (2-3 frames per second). Currently OSX doesn't really support our video cards (Rage Pro). The lowest end video card fairly well supported right now is the Rage 128. I haven't heard a definitive answer yet about whether or not 10.1 will fix this oversight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've heard from one person with a Wallstreet powerbook running some beta releases of 10.1 on his book, and he's very happy with the speed on it, so we may be in luck. 3D graphics on it still sucked, but with any luck the pre-release versions he's been running just don't have good drivers for the Rage Pro yet and the final code will.

Overall though, I've been very happy with it. It's solid as a rock and has a lot of potential. Hopefully by next week or so, 10.1 will be out and some of that potential will be filled.

I do know that when X first came out a lot of Lombard users had problems with 3rd party RAM in their machines. Bad CPU daughter card or something. Don't know if there was ever a resolution for it, but I think it only affects machines released earlier in the year. I got mine in Sept. 99 and haven't had a single problem with it. That may be something you'll want to take a look at though. You can probably find some of the old threads about it at macfixit.com

If I can answer any more of your questions, feel free to let me know.
 
I have been following up on this. My powerbook and its processor s/n and manufacture fit into this catagory. What I am trying to figure out is if all Lombard users that were affected on OSX had issues in OS9? or do the issues only show up in OSX10? That is the main reason why I have held back. Seems like it takes a lot to get the processor changed from apple. I do not want this to drag nor send it in. Fortunately, an apple store is going to open up in Denver in November. Wonder if 10.1 would address that issue? I am to excited and want to load osx on my powerook. I run osx on my imac 333. Not to shabby. Have not fully tested as far as Graphic apps go. Just messing around with software and internet stuff mostly. I switch it back to OS9 so my Woman can get on. She is extremely impatient. All she does is surf the net and e-mail. Granted OSX loads pages and downloads faster that OSX at least in my case, but, the spining beach ball does not cut mustard with her.

Is 10.1 going to support SCSI? or does 10.04 already do? I keep hearing about scsi cards, to me that means it does.

thanks,

gabe
 
Well, I'm not absolutely positive about SCSI support when it comes to the Lombards. I know the OSX beta didn't support the SCSI port on the Lombard, but haven't heard anything about the final versions. I know SCSI was there in the beta for a lot of other machines, so I'd assume the Lombard SCSI port is supported now. I sold off my SCSI burner and HD before final came out, so I'm really not too sure.

Sorry
 
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