Firewire is a form of data transfer that was originally created by Apple along with Texas Instruments back in the late 1990's and early 2000's.
There are many cards, made by many manufacturers, with many different chipsets, or controlling chips for the data to go through. As I said earlier, Firewire was original designed by Texas Instruments. Since they were the part of the original design team, their controller chips will be "higher quality" or better to use than others, which are made by LSI, Lucent, VIA and Ricoh, to name a few.
That is not to say that other manufacturer chipsets wont work, but seeing as they could loosely be considered a "knockoff," it's generally safe to go with Texas Instruments, and skip a lot of extra hassle.
If you want to try going with a different manufacturer, go ahead, but it will be very rare to find them on official compatibility lists from companies such as Avid or Presonus or Focusrite for their gear and your computer.
Now that it's been established that going for a Texas Instruments chip is your best bet, it's time to determine which type of card you need. There are a few different types, so lets break it down as simple as it gets.
Laptops can use one of
four (4) different options:
-Your laptop can have Firewire
built in. If this is the case, and you have a Mac, you're generally good to go. Pick a good interface, and get recording. If you've got Firewire built in and you have a "PC" based laptop, things aren't so simple.
Most manufacturers will use the cheapest possible parts to maximize their own profit, regardless of what you may be looking to use. Ricoh and VIA are common chipsets for laptops, and may work fine with your external hard drives, but realtime streaming data from your audio interface is a whole different matter.
-Your laptop may have an ExpressCard slot, there is
ExpressCard 34, and
ExpressCard 54. The difference is the physical width of the card, either 34 or 54mm wide. It's clearly labelled on the laptop which slot type it is. ExpressCard 34 is the more common on newest laptops over the past 2 years.
-Your older laptop may have a
PCMCIA slot, or CardBus slot. This is older, and fairly obvious that you have it, but it should be labelled. Some older laptops also have two PCMCIA slots, others only have one. This varies by make/model.
If you have a Desktop PC or even a Mac tower, you will have two types of cards to choose from,
PCI Express, or
PCI.
PCI is an older type of add-in card, and is considered a legacy format. For users with older computers, this may be the only type of slot you have in your computer for expansion, and this slot is also featured on many newer computer, but it is being phased out, as
PCI Express becomes more popular.
PCI Express has a few different variants, such as x1, x4, x8 and x16. These numbers are only an indication of the slot type, and bandwidth given. PCI Express firewire cards will almost certainly be PCI Express x1. This is the smallest of the options, and is compatible in all other PCI Express slots. Always check with the motherboard manual or manufacturer to make sure that a PCI-Express x16 slot is not a
graphics only slot. This means that only a graphics card will function if installed in the slot. This is rare for most consumer grade motherboards, but still something to keep in mind.
Do not worry about unused parts of a slot if you've installed a PCI Express x1 card into an x4, x8 or x16 slot, as the extra pins (called "lanes") will only be used for additional bandwidth, and are unaffected.
How do I choose which one to get?
There are many cards for sale, and some manufacturers will say which chip is used on the card. Other hardware manufacturers will have a compatibility list on their website, or available if you email the tech support, or even visit vendor forums, there may be lists available of working cards, on the list, or even not on the list that users have had success with.
There are also a few different types of Firewire available. It might be referred to as 4 pin, 6 pin or 9 pin.
Firewire 4 pin is the same speed as
Firewire 6 pin, which is maximum of 400mb/s (called Firewire 400). The difference is that
Firewire 4 pin does not provide "bus power" or the 12v necessary to power some devices using only the firewire cable. When using
Firewire 4 pin always use the included power adapter with your device.
Firewire 6 pin is the most common format for PC expansion cards, which provides bus power for most devices as well. Not all devices are able to run off bus power however, so be sure to check the manual of the device you're using to make sure you should or shouldn't be using external power as well as bus power.
Firewire 9 pin is also called Firewire 800, and provides bus power for devices just like
6 pin Firewire 400, but operates at a faster 800mb/s maximum speed. While
Firewire 800 is available for desktop PCs, it is not very common. Check the expansion card you have or are looking to buy to see what it has.
There are adapters and cables available which allow you to use any type of firewire with any other. They are all cross compabily, but will only operate as fast as the fastest device connected. Connecting a 6 pin device (which is firewire 400) to a 9 pin port of a computer (Firewire 800) will still only allow the device to work at Firewire 400 speeds.
Just a clarifying side note, there is no adapter from Firewire to USB that will work with audio interfaces. Many people have asked about this in the past on other forums, so just for informational purposes, I'm including the note here. It will not work, and is not possible.
Whether a card is on the list or not, it is important to realize that it does not guarantee compatibility with your computer. You need to test your system accordingly to make sure that you have no problems with the card. Compatibility lists are more of a very strong guideline than a definite "go" list, and should be treated as such.
There is a visual representation of the different types of cards and firewire ports you may have to choose from.
------------------------
Some high quality firewire cards to choose from which all have Texas Instruments firewire controllers:
Adaptec AFW-4300A LP - PCI
Syba SD-EXP30002 - ExpressCard 34
Syba SD-EXPC34-2F - ExpressCard 34
SIIG NN-831012-S2 - PCI
Lycom PE-101 - PCI Express x1
ADS Tech PYRO API-315 - PCI