Hi everyone,

I just bought an AMS Venus DS5 enclosure (model DS-2512CBK), the 5.25inch one, although I'll most likely only use it for HDD. Right now I have an IBM 120GB IDE HDD in it. I wanted to maybe get some opinions on which firewire card to get. I haven't messed much with firewire, not sure what the good cards are.

This will be for my second PC (Asus P4T, P4 1.5GHz, 768MB Rambus). For my main PC, I have a Creative Audigy2 Platinum, so that already has firewire (the drive runs great on this PC btw, nice 'n fast).

I would just use the USB for my other PC, but it's too dang slow, especially since this board doesn't support the newest, fastest USB speeds. So anyway, the local shop that I go to has these manufacturers for firewire cards: Digital Peripheral, Zonet, Xtreme EIO, and Startech. My enclosure has an Oxford 911 chipset for the firewire, and Cypress CY7C68300A chipset for USB. Will any of these cards work equally well? If they do, any opinions on reliability or other performance issues? I don't have to buy the card here necessarily, it's just convenient for me. So I'd rather get one of these unless any objections. Thanks for any responses


Oh and also, I've heard some bad things about the Cypress chipset and optical drives. So if I did use it for an optical drive, should I stick to firewire and the Oxford chipset? I've read mostly good things about Oxford 911.

So I just read that the Oxford 911 chipset is limited to 10x for DVDRW drives. But like I said the enclosure will probably be used only for HDD, maybe the Cypress would work acceptably for burning, cross that bridge if I get there. Although I only burn at 8x anyway, so I assume the Oxford would work just fine for that? I'm more concerned with HDD performance/compatibility anyway.

AFAIK TI (Texas Intruments) makes good Firewire controllers.
//Danne