Need help with a FireWire card

[crazzy6983]

Hi all,

I need some help finding a suitable FireWire card and was sent this way by a friend who swears by you guys and gals.

What I'm trying to find is a PCI or PCI-X FireWire card that has 4 FireWire 400 ports, each with it's own controller chip.

I'm trying to hook up 4 FireWire devices at the same time to a PC. Normally you are able to dasy-chain FireWire devices as defined in the IEEE1394 standards. However I've found out the XP doesn't fully support FireWire and this daisy-chaining. This is why I'm trying to find a work around for this.

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Chris

 

[Admiral Huddy]

upto 3 ports here but the Belkin uses IEEE 1394b specification if that helps..

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=49&subid=422

However, it doesn't cater for you wanting 4 ports each with their own controller.. May I ask why?

 

[crazzy6983]

The deivces we are using are custom made by an American supplier. These devices subsequently have a flash based storage inserted into them (this flash storage comes off an aircraft) which then allows the data to be read from them. These devices fully support plug-and-play, they essential turn the flash-drive into a removable FireWire drive.

Unfortunatly due to XP not fully supporting FireWire, we are unable to dasy-chain these devices as we are supposed to be able to do.

I've done some investigation and for FireWire devices to fully work with XP, each device needs to connect to the computer through individual controller chips. Hence why I need to find a card that has four sepperate FireWire channels.

Thanks for the help, it's much appreciated

Regards

Chris