wparsonsgisnet Posted July 29, 2007 Share #1 Posted July 29, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I am starting to carry a PowerBook G4 with me. It has both usb and firewire ports, but the usb ports are 1.1. This makes the file transfer slow as molasses. I did a search on the web but no brilliant solution suggested itself to me. Anyone recommend a firewire reader for SD (and other, but that doesn't matter) cards? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 29, 2007 Posted July 29, 2007 Hi wparsonsgisnet, Take a look here Seeking Firewide SD card reader. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
johnjs Posted July 30, 2007 Share #2 Posted July 30, 2007 Bill, what about using a Sandisk 6-1 PC-slot card reader instead? I would think the PCMCIA card bus would be even faster or equal to the firewire-400 interface. I've been using the PC-slot for years for my CF cards and it seems faster than USB2.0; both of my recent notebooks have dedicated SD card slots built in. There doesn't seem to be many (I could only find 1) firewire card readers out there for SD... best-John Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #3 Posted July 30, 2007 John, the adapter looks reallyl nice (and inexpensive). Unfortunately, I have a 12" Powerbook and they don't have pc slots. I'm not seeing a lot of the firewire adapters, either. Bummer. The good news is that while the usb-1 port is (slowly) loading images (jpeg's only, of course) iPhoto allows me to start previewing them at the same time. I am just starting to play with this PB and it's pretty handy. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carstenw Posted July 30, 2007 Share #4 Posted July 30, 2007 I have an old Lexar FW CF card reader, and I know that there are CF-to-SD converters. Has anyone tried this combination? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #5 Posted July 30, 2007 Thanks, Carsten, I have one of these converters, too. I'll reexamine the available stuff. There ARE a lot of firewire CF readers; I just didn't use the two gray cells lefft between the ears. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #6 Posted July 30, 2007 My G4 has a firewire 400 adapter and usb-1.1 adapters. I looked these guys up and usb 1.1. is 12 Mbps (Mega bits/sec) compared to f-400 at 400 Mbps. If I got this right, I'll be getting a pickup of speed somewhere around 30 times? Of course, there's bound to be something that has to be taken into account going from 150x SD card thru the SD-to-CF convertor and whatever the G4 does with the firewire stuff going to the disk. These things are in the $70-90 range. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmo Posted July 30, 2007 Share #7 Posted July 30, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Bill, I have a 17" iMac of 2003 also with only USB 1,1 and Firewire and after a long search I managed to find here in Belgium the Addonics FireWire Mini DigiDrive. I'm very pleased with it and it should be no problem to find it in the USA I suppose. You can check the website http://www.addonics.com. Limiting speed I guess is now the speed of my Sandisk Ultra II cards. Best regards Gerd Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted July 30, 2007 Share #8 Posted July 30, 2007 The Addonics Firewire Mini DigiDrive is discontinued i'm afraid. http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/firewire_mini_digidrive.asp Was a rebadged Amtron 1394 that i bought in 2004 and is discontinued as well. http://www.amtron.com/reader/1394fisdmc.htm Too expensive perhaps. Great card reader anyway. I still use it daily for CF, SD and Memory Sticks. Doesn't work with Memory Stick Pro though. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #9 Posted July 30, 2007 They have a Mini-II that I'm looking at. Thanks. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted July 30, 2007 Share #10 Posted July 30, 2007 They have a Mini-II that I'm looking at... Doing FireWire? Would be great. Any link to it? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #11 Posted July 30, 2007 There are both Lexar and Sandisk readers, here. FireWire Sorry, the Mini II is a usb device. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 30, 2007 Author Share #12 Posted July 30, 2007 Just about to buy the Lexar Pro CF and UDMA reader ($63). Anyone use this guy? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share #13 Posted July 31, 2007 Never Mind, the udma reader is firewire 800 only (9-pin intfx). Still looking, but how fun IS this photography stuff?! Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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