D-Link Combo: USB, FireWire Card

Remember the old days when two USB ports were plenty? Well, those days are long gone as gadgets, storage devices and other peripherals clamor for equal port time. D-Link Systems offers a combo USB and FireWire PCI card to expand capacity.

The D-Link High Speed USB 2.0 and FireWire Combo PCI Adapter accomplishes several things at once. First, it adds both USB 2.0 and FireWire ports to the motherboard. Second, because it's a combo card, only one PCI slot is used, which saves space on the board, especially since it has a finite number of PCI slots. Third, there's only one set of drivers to worry about. Finally, there are cost savings associated with not having to buy two separate cards.

However, there is a downside. If one of the FireWire ports go bad, the entire card needs to be replaced even if the USB ports are working fine—a common occurrence for combo cards.

PRODUCT NAME: DFB-A5 PRICE: $69.99 DISTRIBUTORS/ INTEGRATORS: D&H DISTIBUTING, INGRAM MICRO, SYNNEX, TECH DATA. COMPANY: D-LINK SYSTEMS FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CALIF. (714) 885-6000 www.dlink.com

Engineers popped the PCI card in an old Pentium 4 white box. D-Link's DFB-A5 PCI adapter offers two high-speed USB 2.0 ports and three IEEE 1394 FireWire ports—one located on the inside and reserved for internal devices. The USB 2.0 ports offer transfer rates of 480 Mbps; FireWire ports offer up to 400 Mbps. The USB ports are backward-compatible with USB 1.0 and 1.1.

D-Link provides driver support for Windows XP/ME/2000/98SE and Mac OS X 10.1. The Macintosh driver can also be used on Mac OS 8 and OS 9. The USB ports will work at USB 1.1 speeds on the older Macintosh OS versions.

As per the USB standard, the card can support up to 127 devices by cascading multiple hubs. D-Link said the DFB-A5 is designed to work with digital video camcorders, mice, keyboards, external CD-R/RWs, external hard drives, PC cameras, and any other USB or FireWire-enabled device. The card comes bundled with DV Plus 2.0, a video editing program from Honest Technology.

The street price for the DFB-A5 is about $69.99. The card comes with a one-year warranty.