Belkin F5U503-APL FireWire 3-Port PCI Card

List Price: $56.09 Discount Price: $31.60

Features:

• Maximizes the use of ultrafast disk, and optical drives, scanners, printers, iPod, and other peripherals
• Data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps
• Easy plug-and-play setup connects FireWire devices without restarting your computer
• Supports up to 62 Firewire devices f

Customer Reviews:

No sleep, little power, limited, shaky? [Posted on 2006-07-01]
This card, using a TI chipset, has always been annoying.
My son saw a lot of mysterious firewire issues with devices connected through the card, though we were never able to pin down the culprit.
While advertised as compatible with a wide range of machines and systems, it is a 5 volt only PCI card, limiting it to older hardware.
At least on my example of the card, F5U503 Rev.S-3, there is no internal power connector, limiting the useful capacity to one bus powered device, e.g. iPod or 2.5" hard disk, but not both at once. This is not an issue if you plan to use 3.5" or 5" firewire drives which have their own power supplies.
The failure to support deep sleep is the most infuriating aspect of the card. Macs are competent and reliable sleepers, going months before rebooting. The Belkin card prevents deep sleep, something I only learned on the Belkin support site long after I bought the card.

Whether for PC or Mac, I'll choose more carefully next time.

Getting a Mac iPod to work on the PC!! [Posted on 2007-01-20]
Brilliant! I got an old Mac-formatted iPod. It was a cinch to install this card on my PC (Windows XP) and presto! Working iPod. It's also made my PC able to use FireWire backup drives/external drives, and I think I can probably network it to a Mac laptop (or desktop?) now, though I haven't tried. As I said, installation was a cinch. I feel I have Mac-ified my PC a bit, and that makes me happy. Belkin's lifetime warranty makes it worth the price.

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