You're pretty much SOL. The only realistic way I'm aware of to add firewire to a laptop is by PCMCIA or Expresscard.

There are some miniPCIe firewire cards available, but they're not really practical for use in laptops for various reasons, and they're also quite pricey.

what "perfect" laptop is this?

http://www.amazon.com/IEEE-1394-FireWire-Fema … r/dp/B007DNHQPE

Don't know anything about it, but the USB speed would be a bottleneck, but at least you might still be able to use some firewire devices with the laptop.

That adapter isn't going to work... firewire can't be converted to USB that easily. I don't know why they even make such a thing, I can only guess that it must be for some specific non-standard sort of device that will put out USB signals on the firewire port.

They're making laptops without PCMCIA now? When did that start happening?

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

That adapter isn't going to work... firewire can't be converted to USB that easily. I don't know why they even make such a thing, I can only guess that it must be for some specific non-standard sort of device that will put out USB signals on the firewire port.

Or maybe there's a little bridge chip buried in there... OR, it's just for charging old iPods from USB ports.

If you read the reviews on this item you will learn that it does nothing 😉

You will need another machine with firewire...

Or maybe there's a little bridge chip buried in there... OR, it's just for charging old iPods from USB ports.

Definite no on both counts. Even if a firewire->USB bridge chip did exist, it is highly unlikely that the necessary circuitry would fit inside a little plug adapter, and it would certainly cost more than $2.

Nor is such an adapter useful for charging iPods, or any other firewire device, since firewire works on an entirely different voltage and current capacity.

Yes, you're out of luck.

I've seen a similar case with a friend of mine who recently bought a super-expensive 15" Macbook pro Retina, hoping that he could still use his older (but hugely expensive in its day) SCSI flatbed scanner.

He's out of luck also. There used to be a time when external SCSI controllers were available in the market, but now they are horribly difficult to find (and even if you could buy them second hand, there would probably be no drivers for newer Mac OS X versions).

He has to keep an older computer which was upgraded with a PCI SCSI card just to be able to use the scanner.

If OP's laptop is any recent Macbook Pro/Air model:

http://store.apple.com/au/product/MD464ZM/A/a … irewire-adapter

Good to know. My laptop is the Asus N53SN. I love everything about it. Except its lack of Firewire. Guess I should have been more observant, even more than I was. Though, I gather that fewer and fewer new laptops are made with Firewire nowadays anyway. I wanted to use it to control and record from a PreSonus StudioLive 24x4x2 mixing console. Ah well. Thanks for the info.

Jorpho wrote:

They're making laptops without PCMCIA now? When did that start happening?

PCMCIA/Cardbus went away years ago when Express Card came along but that seems uncommon too. I suppose everything tries to be USB now even if PCIe would be much better.

frankly, that is what you get for buying a consumer grade laptop... you limit yourself in durability, reliability, configurability, legacy peripheral support, and expandability

the usage requirements you demand are usually found on business grade laptops these days...
can't afford a new one? buy an off lease one!
need warranty/worried about reliability? get a service contract!

TheMAN wrote:

frankly, that is what you get for buying a consumer grade laptop... you limit yourself in durability, reliability, configurability, legacy peripheral support, and expandability

The latest batch of Core i5 based Dell Latitudes they bought at work, have only USB, HDMI, Ethernet and Power connectors.

Consumer or business, I think everything that isn't a behemoth desktop-replacement class of portable is going that direction.

The primary reason is probably the gradual cheapening of notebooks. Corners need to be cut. And since USB covers almost every peripheral need, Expresscard slots are very low priority. Internal FireWire would seem to me to be more useful because of its use for digital video. But I admit I don't know if it's that critical there anymore.

USB3 is glorious though. Glad that's happening.

SquallStrife wrote:

TheMAN wrote:

frankly, that is what you get for buying a consumer grade laptop... you limit yourself in durability, reliability, configurability, legacy peripheral support, and expandability

The latest batch of Core i5 based Dell Latitudes they bought at work, have only USB, HDMI, Ethernet and Power connectors.

Consumer or business, I think everything that isn't a behemoth desktop-replacement class of portable is going that direction.

yet, you can get an expresscard that will solve that problem 😉

TheMAN wrote:

yet, you can get an expresscard that will solve that problem 😉

Some of the smaller/slimmer ones don't even have that!

Granted, the most common model we bought does have ExpressCard slots this time around, now that USB 3 and Thunderbolt are on the table (and remember that Thunderbolt is PCI Express x1 under the hood), I think ExpressCard will be next IO option to disappear en masse.