I have been shopping for a new motherboard and have had no luck in finding boards that support both esata and 1394b. I will get lucky sometimes via a Google search, but it would be a lot easier if I knew of a website that let you search for boards by the features they offer. Can any one help me find this type of website or even suggest boards that have 1394b connectivity? thanks.
While they don't ship outside the US, Newegg does allow for searches by specific features in their motherboard listings. It doesn't appear that many have it, so you may be better off to purchase a 1394b card instead.
just use google or click the link [google]motherboard 1394b sata uk[/google] Edit: but, yeah, Bs right, it will probably be easier & cheaper to add a 1394b card
I have found that you must use a slot that is 64bit to enjoiy the full benefits of 1394b. That would be PCIe slots only, right? I would have to sacrifice a graphics card in this case.
Because of the tranfer rate, a higher bandwidth bus is needed. PCIe can work, but you won't have to sacrifice full x16 PCIe slot for one. PCIe uses a number of lanes from the chipset, and the slot indicates the maximum number of lanes that can be used with that slot. A single x1 slot uses one PCIe lane, but since they run at 500MB/s that would do it. The only problem is PCIe cards are rather scarce, so I'm not sure if there are any 1394b cards in PCIe format just yet. PCI and PCIe are incompatible both physically and electrically, so right now, 64-bit PCI-X (PCI eXtended, as opposed to PCIe--PCI Express) seems to be the only way to get the full benefits of the card if you don't have the motherboard in many cases. I did find something like this 1394b PCIe x1 card, but I don't know where to buy it off hand.
