Daisy-chaining Metric Halo ULN-2 with G-Drive HDD...

Hi all
I have a Metric Halo ULN-2 which I use via Firewire on my iMac. The iMac is iMac 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2Gb RAM (sadly, I don't think I can upgrade the RAM) and has only one Firewire Buss, so I am assuming, should I wish to use the G-Tech (G-Drive GEN 4) HDD with Firewire I need to daisy-chain.
I tried this a few years back with a cheaper firewire HDD and it crashed my system constantly.
Can anybody advise on the best way to do this for a stable performance or should I stick to USB2 with the G-Drive?
Thanks!
Steve

Spheric is absolutely correct.
Firewire bus speed is handled on a packet by packet basis. In fact every bus will have packets that run at s100 as that is part of the cycle start protocol that mediates isoch transfers and the Mac probes the config rom of all devices at s100. Actually that may not be precisely true for a link that has the 9-pin connection on both ends for FW800.
Regardless, Firewire maintains a speed map that keeps track of the maximum speed available between any two nodes, and unless the device's driver specifically requests a lower transfer speed, packets will be transmitted at the maximum speed available on the link between the two nodes.
So if a s800 device is connected via a 9-pin cable to the computer, it will communicate at s800 for packets between the computer and the device. If there is a s400 device in between the two s800 devices, then the PHY in the s400 device will limit the speed of the packets that pass through it and all traffic will be throttled to the s400 rate for all devices on the far side of the s400 device.
The upshot of this is that if your computer has one port and you are not using a s800 hub, you are better off putting all s800 devices connected to each other and directly to the computer and then hang s400 device off the end of the chain.
The concept that "connecting an s400 device to a Firewire bus at any point in the chain slows down all traffic on the bus to s400" is a persistent, but incorrect idea that has been floating around for a long time. But is absolutely not correct, and if you understand how the bus really works, you are able to get the maximum performance out of the bus.
I suspect that the source of this idea is that while an s400 device is talking on the bus, the bus is going to run at s400. That's absolutely true. But s800 devices can communicate at s800 as long as they are connected by s800 links end-to-end.
While I can't point you to a technical description about this on the web (other than the 1394 specification or the data sheets for the various s800 PHYs), I will say that I designed all the FireWire hardware, firmware and drivers for Metric Halo. What I explain above is correct.
Best regards,
B.J. Buchalter
Metric Halo

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