Getting my feet wet with Flex - starting with 3000 - but need firewire

N1BBR

Hello all,
I would like to get my feet wet with Flex.
I'm a 100% cw

A used flex-3000 is within my current budget.
However I understand there is a need for firewire for interconnect from the PC.
I currently use a lenovo T410 laptop which has an expresscard slot which I've never tried.
I understand a 1394 adapter might work for this?
Otherwise I will need to pick up a used PC with firewire.
Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
N1BBR

VE7ATJ_Don

I'll let some of the 3000/5000 'experts' chime in on this one, but my understanding from earlier threads on this is that Flex recommends a 'native' hardware-based actual firewire port. Emulation of any kind seems to be a problem, as the 3000/5000 generates a considerable amount of data (hence the need for the firewire port) and emulations just can't seem to handle the output.

This quote is from Tim, a FLEX employee from back in 2018 --

"There isn't an alternative solution to using the FLEX-5000 and FLEX-3000 with a non-native Firewire interface. It will just not work if the 1394 bus is being emulated by a different physical interface. It will also not work if the FIrewire interface is not 100% IEEE 1394 compliant too. The only thing I have heard might work is a Thunderbolt interface with the Firewire connector."