Mobility Electronics makes the MAGMA PCI expansion system, a chassis that plugs into the Cardbus expansion socket of PowerBooks and enables them to use PCI expansion cards. The company has announced the FireWire Drive Kit, a new accessory for its CB2 series portable 2 Slot Expansion Chassis.
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The new kit allows users to mount an IDE/ATA hard drive inside the expansion enclosure and connect directly to the Mac using FireWire. Mobility Electronics sees the new accessory as of potential interest to professional musicians and audio engineers who will use it in conjunction with PCI-based pro audio cards via the expansion chassis.
“… because storage data is being handled by Firewire, rather than across the PCI bus, like other solutions, there is absolutely no sacrifice in overall system performance, as measured by track counts,” said Mobility Electronics.
Two kits are available — the FWD80KITCB2, which includes a 7200RPG 80GB Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA/100 disk drive, Oxford 911 FireWire bridge chipset-based IDE converter, cables, and custom mounting bracket; or the FWDKITCB2, which excludes the drive mechanism. They’re available for US$349 and $229 respectively.
If you already own the CB2 you can buy the kit solo. If you buy the CB2 and the FireWire drive kit together, Mobility Electronics will put the kit in the CB2 chassis for no additional installation cost.