Sonnet FireWire 400 to 800 Adapter (FAD-824)

I have two scanners (both at least 5 years old) with Firewire 400 cables that plug into ports in the back of the Apple Display that I bought with my 2008-era Mac Pro. The new Mac Mini has a single Firewire 800 port and without an adapter like this, I could only connect 2 of the 3 cables from the monitor (USB, and DVI using the supplied DVI-to-MiniDVI converter that came with the computer), to the Mini. I'm using the 400-to-800 converter to connect the 3rd cable (Firewire 400) from my 2008 Apple Display, which in turn lets me continue to use the pair of Firewire 400 ports on the back of the monitor, for the two scanners.At first, I didn't think this converter was working because I couldn't detect either scanner from the Print & Scan option of the Mac's 'System Preferences' screen. (Both scanners are too old to have updated drivers for recent versions of OSX including 10.8; I imagine that's why the system doesn't see them.) However, after downloading Vuescan, which drives many scanners, I found that Vuescan has no trouble in communicating with each scanner through the Sonnet 400-to-800 adapter so... all is well.There are 9 cables in a single row going into the back of my Mini, and space along the line is tight. There are 2-3 millimeters to spare on each side of this adapter before you run into the adjacent plugs, so it fits into the array easily. Another reviewer thought it might be a bit longer than necessary, possibly leading to working loose over time. That might become an issue, but in my case, the Firewire 400 cable I plugged into itt takes a sharp right bend after leaving the adapter, and is draped across the power cable, 2 cables away, before going the rest of the way to the monitor's cable set. I don't think it will go anywhere unless the cat gets excited behind the monitors some day.The Sonnet adapter is doing the job I hoped it would do. I needed to use the scanners over the weekend, so I ordered it on 2-day shipping, and Amazon delivered the package exactly on target.

The Sonnet adapter, though pricey for a little piece of plastic, works well, and I'm pleased that I'm again able to use my old Lexar FW400 CF card reader after Apple eliminated the FW400 port(s) on the latest desktop Macs. However, I have my Firewire devices (two FW800 hard disks and a Drobo with FW800) daisy-chained, as is customary, and the Lexar wouldn't work as the last device in the chain if the Drobo was right before it. I switched the daisy-chain order of the hard drives around, ultimately plugging the Sonnet (and thus the Lexar reader) into one of the regular (LaCie) FW800 drives. The Sonnet adapter, again at the end of the chain, now works fine. The initial glitch might be the Sonnet's fault, or it might have something to do with the Drobo, not sure -- but I figured a couple of people out there would like to know and save themselves some headscratching and hassle.

Bought a new Mac Pro for the office and my boss was quite upset to find that Apple has completely discontinued Firewire 400 support and as such, he was unable to use his incredibly over-priced iSight. Ordered two of these so we could have a spare in the office, and it worked like a charm. Immediately found the iSight through the Firewire 400 port in his monitor and was back in business. Two days later, my boss's daughter bought a new MacBook Pro and wanted to do a migration from her old White MacBook. Target Disk Mode is incredibly useful, but without 800 on the MacBook or 400 on the MacBook Pro, there was no way to connect them to each other to migrate her data, (except for Ethernet, but that has always broken why I've tried it). The second adaptor I purchased, to the rescue! They immediately recognized each other and the migration to her new MBP went extremely smoothly. And I looked the biggest bad ass in the mean time for having saved the day (albeit accidentally) by doubling up my original order. So moral of the story: Buy a couple, save the day.

A Mac user for several years I've collected several FireWire devices and cables. Through those years the ports have changed: 400 was prevalent, now 800 is all that's left. Adapters like this one are perfect for repurposing the connectors. Originally gotten for an older iPod which still supports FireWire. Battery shot, I couldn't add any extra media to it, needed FireWire to power it while syncing. My current Mac only has 800 connectors which made my cable useless. This adapter was perfect. I also find it useful with 400-to-400 cables for external drives when using with newer connectors.Without such an adapter, legacy devices and cables would be inaccessible, unusable. While it only permits 400 Mb/s throughput, it at least allows connection. Tight fit in ports, it's a great solution at a better price than on most sites.

I used this to connect my fw400 monitor cable to my fw800 only new mac. It works fine for my old (no desire to replace) fw400 compact flash card reader, which I now just plug into the monitor's fw400 link.But I also tried it out as an option to use to connect my fw400 canon scanner to the computer, and it did not work with this or with the fw400 to fw800 cable I also tried out. Ended up using the scanner's USB 2.0(?) link instead. So, basically ymmv on how useful this is.(And it's several bucks cheaper as I type, less than a month later. Amazon can be so annoying sometimes.)

I have a useless (to me anyway) Firewire 800 port on my Powerbook. This little baby lets me connect my Canon digital Firewire 400 camcorder to it through the adapter. Works like a charm. My Firewire 250 GB external HD doesn't like it for some odd reason, but I bought it for the camera and other standalone Firewire 400 devices, for which it works well.I also like the fact that it is a small, hard, single piece of plastic. No wires or parts to get easily bent or something. Sonnet makes good products.

Ideale per chi dispone di un Mac Pro fustino e ha, come me, la necessità di utilizzare vecchie periferiche che altrimenti rimarrebbero inutilizzabili.

Permette di collegare gli apparecchi firewire alla porta firewire 800 utilizando i cavi firewire 400 esistenti. Dovrebbero darlo in dotazione con tutti i nuovi mac!

Usei para conectar um Mac mini a uma mesa digi 002. Funcionou perfeitamente.

Ottimo prodotto, ben costruito, forse un pò troppo grande. Lo uso con un cavo FireWire 400 ed è perfettamente funzionante.

新しいiMacを購入したら、FireWire800のポートしかないことが発覚。このままでは、所有している第３世代iPodおよび外付けHD が使用出来ないので、ネットで対処法を探したところ、このSonnet FireWire 800 to 400 Adapte FAD-824 を購入すれば、既存のFireWire400のケーブルにこのアダプターを使用してiMacに接続出来る事がわかったので、早速Amazonで購入。iMac 20 inch (2.66GHz) と第３世代iPod及びIO-DATA製の外付けHDを問題なく接続して使用しております。値段はちょっと高いけど、まあ所有している機器を問題なく使用出来るので妥当な出費だったかと思います。でも、Appleには FireWire400のポートも残しておいて欲しかったな。。。