Hi and a question from a newbie to Flex

[MM0XXW]

First off ‘hi’ to all I’m Martyn-MM0XXW

Now to my question;
I’ve recently become the owner of a Flex 5000A and currently have it running on an i7 Dell laptop with W10.
My old desktop pc couldn’t take a FireWire card so I decided to purchase an Apple iMac 10-core m3 chip desktop pc.
Now being a newbie to FireWire my laptop is using FW400 but the new iMac has Thunderbolt (equivalent to FW800) ports so essentially I’m wondering what cables I’d need to get my 5000 working on the iMac?

Thanks in advance

Martyn.

[ke9ns]

Apple used to make a Thunderbolt2 to FireWire Adapter. But PowerSDR only runs under Windows. I assume your M3 (Arm based CPU) can probably run a Windows11 emulator? So you would need to purchase a Thunderbolt3/4 to Thunderbolt2 adapter, as well as a Thunderbolt2 to FireWire (see the FireWire link on the left side of my PowerSDR webpage for details and photos). But since your M3 is not x86 or x64 based, and PowerSDR needs the DSP to run in real-time, I have no clue if this configuration would work? If you try, let me know the results.
Darrin

[MM0XXW]

I’ve been (unsuccessfully) trying to get my hands on the TB2 to FW800 adapter but they’re at silly prices over here however I haven’t quite given up yet and will indeed keep you posted.
I appreciate your input Darrin, many thanks

[ke9ns]

I also noticed that its now hard to find that Apple product as well.

If the inside of your laptop has a mini-PCIe slot, you can find a FireWire card for it. I know this works because I actually did this with a Windows x86 tablet and a Flex-5000. Newer laptops will somtimes have a mPCIe slot with a wi-fi card plugged into it.

Darrin