Filed under: Macbook Pro
Sonnet FireWire dongle gives your MacBook Pro the gift of FW400
When Steve Jobs announced the new MacBook Pros, Apple received a lot of criticism for excluding a FireWire 400 port, despite the addition of FireWire 800. While most people were sitting around and griping, one company actually did something to reconcile the situation. Sonnet has created a dongle that allows you to use FireWire 400 devices in your MacBook Pro's FireWire 800 port. The Sonnet Simply Fast dongle works with standard 6-pin male FW400 cables.
This dongle can be bought from the Sonnet online store, or from other retailers (i.e. Amazon) for around $14.24US. You can visit the Sonnet website for more information about the FireWire adapter. If you are looking for solutions to this FW 400/800 mystery then you might also want to check out FireWire 800 to 400 cables which are very plentiful, and might be slightly cheaper.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
vandil said 11:07AM on 11-26-2008
Um...FW800-to-400 adapters were never an issue. These adapters have been around since the 800 port made it debut years ago.
The issue is the lack of a USB-to-FW400 adapter for unibody MacBooks (and likely all the other refreshed consumer-level Macs).
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Xials said 11:25AM on 11-26-2008
Um.. It surprises me to see people making comments acting like they are smarter than whoever posted the story and then make comments about a USB to FireWire adaptor. It's not effectivly possible. FireWire is an inteligent interface, USB is not. USB lacks the abilities of FireWire therefore you would turn your FireWire device into a useless device. There is a reason why pro equiptment uses FireWire and consumer garbage uses USB.
Hadrion said 11:23AM on 11-26-2008
AFAIK, USB cannot be adapted to Firewire, at least not without major loss of bandwidth, as they use extremely different methods of communication.
I think the DV to FW800 cables are cool tho :D
Realisticly, why would a consumer laptop need firewire? If you're editing video from a FW400/800 deck, its typically HD, the Hard drive on the macbook is gonna be the bigger problem at that point. and for miniDV? Get something with the muscle to do it... Honestly, I don't think Firewire on a portable is relevant for the average consumer.
John Laur said 2:23PM on 11-26-2008
OK not to nitpick but a couple of points are worth making in this thread. FW800 is pin-compatible with FW400 ports with a passive adapter. Why anyone would spend $15 for one when you can get them for $2 or less is anybody's guess. Instead of getting an adaptor, just buy a cheap, new firewire cable.
Secondly, it is entirely possible to build a Firewire to USB interface. USB video interfaces (VGA/DVI) use off the shelf graphics hardware with a custom PCI->USB bridge IC and software driver which allows them to deal with things like interrupts and DMA that the graphics chips and drivers expect. This same type of hardware would be the basis for a Firewire->USB interface, but it would come with a couple of caveats: First, you would lose hardware based DMA (Hint: this is the major thing that makes firewire faster than USB despite the reduced line speed). It would have to be simulated by the host device driver/bridge driver and would consume a lot of CPU time for sure, particularly with the USB overhead. Second, you would probably not be able to hit even close to S400 line speed. Firewire can have bus contention, so the devices could deal with waiting on the bus, but depending on the specific peripheral and the amount of bus bandwidth they really consume, this could be a problem. Very high bandwidth audio interfaces or certain HD video interfaces would be the most prone, but I really doubt most people who drop 5 or 6 thousand dollars on a piece of firewire gear really care much about the macbook.
Finally, remember too that most people missing firewire on the macbook are probably missing it for firewire based video capture from camcorders. A little bit of info here, video transport over DV (including HDV, and a number of other HD transports) actually runs over firewire using S100 (ie 100mbps). Which is maybe why Firewire to USB adaptors specifically for DV transport already exist (There is just no OS X driver support).
Joe Russell said 11:18AM on 11-26-2008
Slightly cheaper cables?
Heck yeah, monoprice has us covered:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=firewire+400+800+cable&x=0&y=0
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teeth weasel said 11:19AM on 11-26-2008
Cory,
Do you ever do anything except post things everyone else already knows really, really late?
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teeth weasel said 11:20AM on 11-26-2008
Might I add, by the way, that the cables are a much better solution as firewire is mostly used in professional instances, i.e. performance, and i'd much rather have one point of failure in a cable connection (for an accidental disconnect) than two.
Krest said 11:19AM on 11-26-2008
Or one could simply buy a FW800 to FW400 cable...
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till said 11:21AM on 11-26-2008
too slow... Joe Russell beat me on the cable issue... ;)
Smivey said 12:13PM on 11-26-2008
Around $14.24? How much is it, $14.23?
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Geoff said 12:29PM on 11-26-2008
Any chance for you guys to write "dongle" ... :P
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Carney said 12:58PM on 11-26-2008
Wait, FireWire 400 devices and cables can't simply plug into FireWire 800 ports??
I didn't know that. And frankly, that's lame.
As much as USB 2 deserves criticism when compared with FireWire, at least USB is both backward and forward compatible.
A USB 2 device will work when plugged into a USB 1 port, and a USB 1 device will work when plugged into a USB 2 port, just slowly.
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brian said 1:33PM on 11-26-2008
You say "Apple received a lot of criticism for excluding a FireWire 400 port, despite the addition of FireWire 800." That should say "presence", not "addition". My two-year-old 15" MBP has a FireWire 800 port.
+1 for Monoprice--a place that sells cables (i.e., a bit of plastic and metal) for what they SHOULD cost.
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Mike said 2:32PM on 11-26-2008
I have had one of these adapters from Sonnet for years, I actually bought it at the Apple Campus Store in Cupertino, it has been great for me especially when trying to use a FW800 HD with pass through to downgrade to 400
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mr kitty said 8:32PM on 11-26-2008
And in other news, an extra battery can double your laptop's run time without plugging in!
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Craig said 11:48AM on 11-28-2008
Actually.. I'm a big fan of adapter vs cable. That way, it's easier to travel. i have a couple of studios that I go to that have firewire interfaces.. instead of trying to rip apart their rig to plug in a FW800->FW400 cable, I can just adapt at the loose end, and I'm up and running..
As for the cost, it's a little deceptive. Expect to pay $23.98 with shafting and handling.
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