I’d like to be able to connect a PCI to FireWire expansion card to my laptop on the outside in order to be able to connect six pin IEEE 1394a connectors to it. I’m digitizing Mini DV cassettes. Is this even feasible?
That’s not a PCI enclosure, it’s a PCIE enclosure. It would not work for an older PCI card.
PCI or PCIe? They are different, so make sure you get the right thing.
PCIe thunderbolt cards can be found on aliexpress for $70-100 AUD.
I have this one:
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLsmPzv
You need to have a thunderbolt port (not the same thing as USB, check your device specs), and you need a power supply, I use an old PC power supply.
You can also get fully nice enclosures used for the cost of the graphics card inside. I bought an enclosure + GT 1030 and sold the 1030 for the cost of buying the whole thing.
Thats wild, why would anyone want a gt1030 egpu…
Is the enclosure large enough for a full size GPU?
Yeah. It was a sonnet eGPU enclosure so any up to 2.5 slot card would fit with tons of vertical room.
And I lied, it was actually 1060, but the bad one. The 3 gig one.
Thanks for pointing that out! 🙏💦
This looks promising indeed! And I also have a spare PSU.
The one I got even came with a motherboard 24 pin adapter to turn on the ATX PSU, so I was very happy with that. The manual is Chinese only, but the only real gotcha was that there is two USBC ports, you want to use the one on the far side of the power connectors, thats the thunderbolt port.
Just to clarify, do you mean PCI (old) or pcie (new). I’m assuming you mean pcie since it’s thunderbolt.
If I’m right you can get a pcie thunderbolt GPU dock on eBay for like $70 (without power supply) like this
You’ll need a separate ATX PSU
After doing some research, it seems the modern way of approaching this is to get a Thunderbolt dock for laptops. It has to be Thunderbolt and not just standard USB-C, even though they both use the same form factor.
I found this as one of the cheapest options at $140: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ7VXYDJ
You would then get a Thunderbolt to FireWire cable, which is a simple cable and less than $10.
The problem is that FireWire is incredibly picky about power delivery and so anything that officially supports FireWire also has to have a really antiquated specific power delivery spec that no one is streamlining anymore. So it’s unfortunately niche at this point.
But a lot better than $4k!
Second the others’ PCI to PCIe distinctions
If what you need is indeed PCIe, most modern laptops have such an interface, it’s just shaped inconviently.
You could get an M.2 PCIe to PCIe adapter like this one: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/dfrobot/FIT0782/14322643
