Alas, Apple and others have seen fit to eliminate the Firewire 400 ports on their computers in favor of single Firewire 800 ports. This has resulted in the need for adapter cables like these to allow the use of the many existing Firewire 400 (1394a) peripherals with Firewire 800 (1394b) ports. The vast majority of these peripherals are Digital Videocams and external Hard Drive enclosures, as well as others.
These Flat Cable adapters are excellent in design and function. (OK... so the color is a little "loud", but we aren't buying them for esthetics are we?? LOL). Function follows design, and these cables work perfectly out of the box. The connector ends are robust and well made. The price is very reasonable, especially when compared to what you would pay for an equivalent in places like Best Buy.
Note: You can daisychain Firewire peripherals and mix FW400 with FW800 in the same chain... HOWEVER, be aware that if you have a FW400 peripheral anywhere in a FW800 chain, ALL the peripherals in the chain are reduced to FW400 speeds. So if you have a speedy FW800 Hard Drive that you also attach a FW400 peripheral to, your HD is reduced to FW400 transfer speeds.
All firewire will likely be considered legacy soon because we are probably less than a year from USB 3.0 implementation which will offer significantly higher transfer speeds than any firewire system currently available or in development. LaCie FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 Flat Cable 130849 (Orange)
The flat cable seemed like a good idea and I liked the easy to pick out orange, but this cable's designer chose form over function. The flat cable does not lay the way most cables do. Also, the 800 end of the cable does not make a firm connection with my MacBook Pro; there is very noticeable gap between the cable and the edge of my case, whereas it should be flush (like every USB and other cable I connect to the computer). Further, the cable's connection is wobbly and comes disconnected on accident frequently (and partially disconnected even more regularly). For instance, removing my Mini DisplayPort connection often disconnects the FW cable as well. I don't know if this is an issue with LaCie's cable design or Apple's FW port design, but the cable is not flush in the FW 400 end connected to my audio interface (Echo AudioFire4).
The worst for last: static seems to interfere with the operation of the cable. When I touch anything that creates a static charge (in the dry climate of Colorado that's most everything), signal to my interface is interrupted. Owning the interface for close to 2 years prior using the included FW 400 cable on my old MacBook Pro, this never happened once. Unfortunately, new MacBook Pros only sport a FW 800 port, thus the need for such a convertor cable. Now, there are a number of confounds here, but the cable seems the most likely candidate.
I've gotten 2 of these cables and both of them were faulty on delivery. Can't flex the cable at all once connected or it loses the connection. Guess I'll stick with my ridiculously long Belkin cable that maintains a solid connection...
Because of this cable I spent a long time trying to figure out what had gone wrong with my Firewire device (a Digi 002), and my outlet adapters, my Belkin power surge, my software, my Mac Mini, and everything else... Thinking that because the current in my house was fluctuating a bit when turning off the lights, this was causing my Digi 002 to stop responding with the computer and software I was using to record. ProTools would halt, Reason and Logic Pro would simply crash and sometimes freeze the entire computer. I had thought the entire time that the problem was with the power of my Digi 002 device. Then I remembered I had a regular Firewire 400 cable on both ends and a Moshi Firewire 400 to 800 adapter sitting in my drawer. I initially thought, "this can't be the problem", the Lacie is a brand new cable, cost a lot more than the Moshi adapter at the store and their products are supposedly superior to others. Well, I was wrong. The problem was this cable. The Moshi adpater with a cheap Firewire cable worked without a problem under the exact same scenario, turning lights on/off in the house, while the Lacie would continue to freeze my Digi 002 and software on any change in current in the house. I was so frustrated I had to make a video demonstrating this problem:
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My friend brought over an Mbox 2 Firewire and we had the same problem with the Lacie cable. About the appearance of cable itself, it looks real nice and even comes with these labels for you to label each end of the cable with information about the device. But this is pointless if the cable is going to loose connection every time I turn off a light in my house.
I am quite disappointed in the quality of this cable coming from Lacie. I would not recommend this to anyone who needs a cable like this for audio or video recording. Also, I would never ever use it for important data transfer between hard drives. Sorry Lacie but you guys have really let me down. - Macintosh - Firewire 800 - Computer Cables - Lacie'
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