FireWire Depot is the latest vendor of storage products and accessories to enter the market with a FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) Cardbus expansion card. The new 1394bCB card, retailing for about US$90, is designed to work on Macs and Windows PCs and provides FireWire 800 and FireWire 400 connectivity.
The 1394bCB card sports a Texas Instruments-made chipset and features two 9-pin FireWire 800 ports and one 6-pin FireWire 400 port for backwards-compatibility with older FireWire devices. It works with an external power supply in case you use devices that have to be bus-powered.
The 1394bCB requires a 32-bit CardBus slot to operate, which can be found on most PowerBooks capable of running Mac OS X (except for the 12-inch PowerBook, which lacks such expansion). The 1394bCB card works at FireWire 800 speeds when used on a PowerBook running Mac OS X v10.2.5 or later, although it will support FireWire 400 connectivity on Mac OS 9.x or higher.