Macbook Pro and Express card meltdown

[Visceral_IvaN]

Well this is KIND OF an accessories comment, albeit not a RED accessory. But a rather important one nonetheless.

For starters we have a new MacBook Pro with Leopard installed.

Our idea was to use an express card with an eSATA port to make a quick transfer job of RED footage.

So we got the following Express Card:
REX -EX30s

Well if you have the same specs as me, DONT USE THIS CARD with Leopard!
We installed the firmware (perhaps against our better judgement) 2 hours before meeting a client, and it sent the Mac APE, nearly burning it out. Everything froze on all accounts. Our only solution was to reformat, reinstall OX, redcine, redcode, and quicktime codecs. Fortunately we did tis all with half an hour to spare.

Researching conflicts between leopard and this card revealed a very common incompatibility and conflicts in the present firmware, even according to chipset's maker (according to an email I read on a forum). Although what happened to ours appears to be seated at the more extreme end of the spectrum, I thought I'd give you guys a head up on this.
Ciao,
Ivan

 

[Dylan Reeve]

This is another reason I tend to avoid the bleeding edge releases. We run 10.4.11 on the MacPro, and will probably do so for some time.

I've seen a number of hardware devices with warnings about driver support in Leopard, so I don't know what's changed in the underlying architecture, but clearly it's something significant.

 

[Visceral_IvaN]

This is another reason I tend to avoid the bleeding edge releases. We run 10.4.11 on the MacPro, and will probably do so for some time.

I've seen a number of hardware devices with warnings about driver support in Leopard, so I don't know what's changed in the underlying architecture, but clearly it's something significant.

Agreed.
Though funnily, It held true to its logo "It just works" until yesterday, when it REALLY DIDNT WORK.

What frustrated me was the utter lack of any way to completely UNinstall a driver. And the lack of a system restore which doesnt involve backing up the entire hard drive to another hard drive.

 

[Paul Hazlett]

I have had no problems with my esata card from sonnet tech and I beat on it
for 2 weeks straight with a MBP 2.4 and leopard.

maybe it was just a defective card.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Agreed.
Though funnily, It held true to its logo "It just works" until yesterday, when it REALLY DIDNT WORK.

What frustrated me was the utter lack of any way to completely UNinstall a driver. And the lack of a system restore which doesnt involve backing up the entire hard drive to another hard drive.

I am still endlessly frustrated that there is no managed system uninstaller in OS X - Windows has had it for more than 10 years, every distribution of Linux I use has well-developed package management...

 

[Visceral_IvaN]

I have had no problems with my esata card from sonnet tech and I beat on it
for 2 weeks straight with a MBP 2.4 and leopard.

maybe it was just a defective card.

Like I said, it is actually an issue with this particular brand and the lack of firmware. Many brands actually do work with leopard, just not this one.

 

[Paul Leeming]

The biggest issue was at the point of sale, because the box was clearly marked with a sticker advertising Leopard compatibility with a driver update from the internet, however on getting home with it and trying to do just that we found that the latest driver was build 1.1.9 which was over twelve months old! This is for an ExpressCard34 that uses the Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset, which as it turns out has a hardware issue with Leopard (but not Tiger for some reason?!).

Anyway, the offending item has been returned for a refund and we went to plan B on the night which was USB connection instead of eSATA. Works fine, just a bit slower for now until we find a new ExpressCard34 that works.

Cheers,

Paul

 

[Paul Hazlett]

How bout Firewire 800? I have a great little box from OWC that has a 7200
rpm hitachi notebook drive in it. and I can edit uncompressed 8 bit from it.
it also runs on bus power, so no power supply

 

[Paul Leeming]

FW800 works fine. We're using the Lexar FW800 CF reader to ingest CF footage, or the RedDrive's FW800 port to do the same.

Our on set workflow is:

Red Media ---> FW800 ---> MacBook Pro ---> eSATA/USB ---> Century KD25/35PRO HDD dual simultaneous backup

It's the eSATA portion that was screwed up, so for now it has to be USB2.0 which is a bit slower.

Cheers,

Paul