How To's

Information on USB & Firewire

All of the current Macintosh computers have USB and Firewire as standard connections for adding peripherals.

USB:

Stands for Universal Serial Bus. This is a low speed but powerful interface for adding peripherals such as scanners, zip drives, keyboard and mice. This is an expandable port that will support up to 126 devices per port. It is expanded via a device known as a USB Hub.

Firewire:

Firewire is a very high speed interface for attaching peripherals such as digital video cameras, hard drives and high speed CD/RW drives. Firewire devices generally have two plugs on them, one in and one for out. Expanded through daisy chaining.

Adding USB and/or Firewire is very easy as long as your computer meets the minimum requirements.

1) Your Mac MUST have a PCI slot. PCI is an internal expansion slot for cards. Macs such as 7600, 8600, 9600 and 6500 all have PCI slots.

2) You must have OS 8.6 or higher. We recommend OS 9.1

3) Come by our store and we can recommend a card to meet your needs. There are 2 port and 4 port USB cards as well as cards that have BOTH USB and Firewire.

4) You may want to bring your Mac by when you come so we can perform the installation of the card if you are not comfortable doing it. There is a small fee to install the card along with the appropriate software and drivers.

5) You are done. Once the card is installed it is just a matter of picking the peripheral (mouse, scanner, printer etc.) and plugging it in and loading the software for it.