Anyone using OCUlink ?

Firewire is 400Mbps or 800Mbps, so 40Gbps is certainly not going to be a bottleneck!

I would expect it to work, have a loog at ServeTheHome, the probably have examples of using it for NICs or HBAs

Firefox no warning, I suspect it's a false-positive by your A/V

You'll have to pay import Duty+VAT+handling fee

Oculink is just PCIe on a cable. If they're being fancy there's a retimer/redriver but oftem they're cheapskates.

It should work I'd have thought - you card is probably Gen1 x1 so not exactly taxing.

Another option is the Apple Thunderbolt Firewire adapter (LSI643 chip) plus their Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter, into a Thunderbolt 3/4/5 port. Both discontinued though.

I suspect they're dropshipping them from China (or via a German warehouse) and don't have an EU/UK operation. BICBW. The German forwarder might be set up for sending DDP (VAT collected at checkout) but often it's easier with China stock (no risk of double VAT etc).

Theo

"How to use FireWire and PCIe cards with a laptop via USB4/Thunderbolt/USB-C (MiniDV Capture works!)"

An attempt to find a dock with a bunch of ports, didn't turn up anything when I tried. A dock would be a way of getting a Firewire port. But, the docks are rather a bore that I could find.

For one older device, I keep an old computer to run it. There is just one cable between the two items. The computer normally has no monitor/keyboard/mouse when not being used, and to use it, I cable up stuff.

My 11 year old PC has a Firewire on the back, and that's the only machine which always has a monitor/keyboard/mouse to do a job like this. It currently runs both W10 and W11, and the W11 was installed using Rufus.ie .

The gmktec-nucbox-k12 would be great, as a web surfing box. As long as the provided connectors do everything you want, it would be fine for the purpose.

One question, is where is their DDR5-5600 RAM coming from ? As I understand it, the Chinese memory factory makes something like DDR5-4800. And memory coming from SKHynix, you'd expect that to be a lot more expensive. I've bought a fair number of RAM products over my life span, and one thing I learned is "NEVER buy unbranded RAM". The RAM should have a clearly identified source.

One batch of RAM I bought, I got it for half price . What's wrong with the RAM ? It has a chemistry problem. If you leave the DIMMs in the computer slots while the computer is not being used, it *ruins* the RAM. Of the eight sticks I bought, five sticks are dead. The reason the other three survive, is they're kept

The RAM that's in the room today, is all fine stuff and no problems whatsoever to report. It's branded RAM.

DDR5 has two levels of ECC possible. And the second level, that's at about the limits of USENETter endurance :-) Someone in another group, actually got real honest ECC working on an AMD box. It was a "constant RMA" experience for *months* to get that to happen. I was at wits end, trying to help him. I think the last time the motherboard went back to the manufacturer, they put a special one-off BIOS in it for him. As otherwise, I cannot see why it started working. While good RAM doesn't make errors, part of the purpose of having ECC is for "monitoring" so you know what kind of error floor is present.

Paul

Available on Fleabay at many times the original new cost :-(.

Sadly, Apple have removed Firewire support from their products, or are you suggesting using the two daisy-chained Apple adapters with a PC with a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port ?. I hadn't actually considered doing that for some reason.

Reading further, it seems that the German site only supplies EU buyers, while the rest of the world receives their products from China.

Disappointing as they were originally £25 and £49 respectively.

I was suggesting using them from a PC. The adapter is just an LSI643 chip and Windows should find it and attach drivers - you might have to agree to a prompt about a new Thunderbolt device connected, and then it should just be a regular PCIe card.

BTW, some of the mini-PCs also include a PCIe slot which would avoid the need for Oculink and an external dock. The Minisforum MS-01 is one example. However given the price of RAM nowadays it might be cheaper to look for an old corporate PC like a Dell Optiplex, HP ProDesk/Elitedesk, Lenovo Thinkcentre. The 'tiny' 1 litre form factors tend not to have slots but the next size up 'SFF' often do.

Theo

Indeed. I have been looking at ex-corp HP Elitedesk and similar on Amazon and other places, but the decent spec ones are almost as much as a new mini PC and tend to come with only 8Gb ram (I suspect the other 8Gb is being salvaged and reusued with other 2nd hand stuff due to the eye-watering prices of DDR4 ram).

We might have to wait until 2028 for increased ram production to be ramped up (or DDR4 production to actually be *restarted*).

Personally I think the AI boom is going to go phut even faster than the 2-3 years that the DOTcom boom took to unwind. That should result in a glut of RAM chips.

Anyone who bought Western Digital shares in Autumn 2024 will be laughing all the way to the bank, after WD floated off Sandisk as a separate company, and the both companies share price soared.

If you can find a new mini PC with PCIe slot and 16GB of RAM then by all means nab one, but mini PC prices have been affected just as much by the RAM shortage - perhaps some of the vendors haven't raised prices yet, but they will.

On the used market, I'd look at ebay and other refurbisher sites (Bargain Hardware, Tier1, etc) not Amazon. eg a quick search for 'Elitedesk SFF' came up with:

First hit for Firewire cards includes a low profile bracket, for £15:

Here's hoping, one or two signs emerging ...

Well its not very clear....I remember people back in the early noughties saying ARM valuation was crazy: it would mean that every household had half a dozen ARM licensed chips

Of course, now we do.

Looked at that one.

It's not one of their small factor ones though and doesn't have an optical drive even though there seems to be a slot (which I can't insert my existing asus 24x dvd writer into).

Thanks. I have been wondering which AMD processors support Win11 Pro for a while. Intel chips need to be gen 8 or newer (AFAIK)

In extremis a USB external DVD drive is an acceptable compromise for occasional use.

I have the last version of the HP 800 EliteDesk to come with an optical drive. I feel your frustration.

For anyone interested in CD/DVD/BR drives, apparently one company is ending the making of the drives soon, so if you wanted a writer that can write anything, now would be the time to buy one.

The current prices seem to be about double what they should be.

You can still buy cake boxes of media, but there aren't exactly a lot of brands sitting on the shelf. And for a BR disc, blanks of those are relatively expensive.

You might be able to find an enclosure for an internal drive to use. Rather than accepting one of the slower "laptop" drives.