I want to have USB2 and Firewire capabilities on my Pentium 4 PC. Am I
better off with a hybrid card or should I get separate cards? Are
there any issues to beware of relevant to compatibility, performance,
etc? Can you recommend a product(s)?

Hello boomering,

I don't forsee a problem with you purchasing a product that has both
USB2 and Firewire capibilities for your Pentium 4 PC if you need both
of them, especially if you can get this card at a cheaper price than
purchasing them seperately.

I have a family member who has the following card in their PC and it
has worked like a charm:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.asp?Sku=A0065077&category_id=4000&customer_id=19

What further reinforces my recomendation for this card is that it has
received a 4.5 star rating (92 people rated) on Amazon.com. See:
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y01Y5368113Y8466428/qid=1038362321/sr=1-1/104-7383785-2939903

I did some searches on the internet and found no problems regarding
speed or compatibility issues with this card. Of course there will
always be a few issues with any product that is released,

Belkin offers a Lifetime Warranty Guaruntee on this product as you can
see here:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=125578

I did some further searching for you (using http://www.pricewatch.com)
and the following are the two lowest priced places I found this
product at (including shipment to the United States):

http://www.cruxworks.com/cruxworks/showdetails.phtml?pc=AJD44&cw=455844
($75 + $9 = $84 with shipping)

http://www.harddrive.com/page_loader.shtml?http&&&63.86.201.5/cgi-bin/itemdy15.pl?keyword=FWI+BEK+F5U008MAC&UID=
($78 + $10 = $88. with shipping)

I hope this is the type of answer you were looking for. If you need
any clarifications please let me know.

tisme-ga


Search Strategy:

usb2 OR "usb 2" firewire card
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.asp?Sku=A0065077&category_id=4000&customer_id=19

belkin usb 2.0 firewire problems
://www.google.ca/search?q=belkin+usb+2.0+firewire+problems&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=

BELKIN usb 2 firewire
://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=BELKIN+usb+2+firewire&meta=

Also used searching on: Dell.com, Belkin.com and Pricewatch.com

I'm not sure it's still applicable today (what with windows xp doing
wonders and all), but in the days of yore, having 2 seperate cards
wasn't as good of an idea because that would require two irqs to be
used, and there are only a few spare ones to go around. I'm fairly
sure this isn't an issue with windows 2000 and xp, but it's worth
mentioning.

I agree totally with tisme's assessment.

Some lower priced alternatives:

http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/search/results/0,10214,0-1257,00.html?tag=sort&qt=usb+firewire&cn=&ca=1257&so=1&st=0

This one is interesting because it is placed in
a hard drive bay and allows front access:

$37.00 USB 2.0 1394 FIREWIRE COMBO BAY HUB
Manufacturer: SIIG Inc. http://www.siig.com

$59.00 USB 2.0 FIREWIRE 10/100 RJ45 ETHENET PORT COMBO PCI CARD
Manufacturer: SIIG Inc. http://www.siig.com

$61.00 3PORT FIREWIRE + 2PORT USB 2 PCI COMBO ADAPTER CARD
Manufacturer: D-Link Systems Inc.

$75.00 USB 2.0 & FIREWIRE COMBO CARD
Manufacturer: IOGear

Hello
I 'think' with a combo card if you are transferring data from an
external USB 2 hard drive to an external Firewire hard drive it will
be slower than doing the same transfer with dedicated cards, as the
transfer will be sharing the same chipset on the same combo card. (my
logical but unproven theory).
regards
lot-ga