Macbook pro unibody Firewire port info required

[Gary Coyle]

Got a 15 inch 6 month old model secondhand for a great price but was wondering if anyone knew how many pins does the firewire 800 port have

im looking for a firewire 800 cf card reader but been told the mac must have a 6 or 9 pin connection or it wont be powered like a USB port

anyone know if the unibody is a 4, 6 or 9 pin connection

Thanks

 

[wicker_man]

Firewire 800 has 9 pins and looks like this:
http://docs.digitalpecha.org/BLOG/DigitalLibrary/images/firewire800cable.jpg

Firewire 400 comes in 4 pin (unpowered) and 6 pin (powered) variants:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/FireWire_cables.jpg

Ports look like this:
http://firewireexternalharddrives.gowiseup.com/firewire-external-hard-drives/

I believe all MacBook Pro's (apart from the early 15" Intel ones from a couple of years back) have firewire 800 (9 pin) and 400 (6 pin). The Unibody ones just have the 9 pin firewire 800 port, but you can get adapters to convert to 6 or 4 pin.

Hope this helps!

 

[Gary Coyle]

Great info wickerman, looks like ive got firewire 800 then, now to find a good card reader to suit.

 

[Chappers]

Lexar have a FW800 reader. However unless you have cards that can send the data at that speed you might as well stick to the cheaper USB versions.

Lexar themselves show only a 10% speed increase on the fast UDMA cards,when comparing USB versions of the reader to the FW800 version