eSATA Expresscard/34 and vga splitter for MBP?

[psylozen]

Hi Folks,

I'm gearing up my unibody MBP for vjing, but I'm missing a couple of ingredients hardware wise.

1. I need some sort of eSATA expresscard adapter. A bit of research shows that the majority of these seem to be very flaky... Can anybody recommend one that will work flawlessly on Snowleopard on a 15" unibody MBP?

2. I need some sort of adapter/splitter that will convert the mini-display out port to 2 vga outputs. Suggestions?

Tks for the input (:

m.

[gradek]

I though the new 15" MBP unibody does not have an expresscard/34 slot anymore only the 17"
Its the biggest thing holding me back from buying one. I don't want to dish out the extra cash for the 17" MBP just for the express slot. To my knowledge there is no good way to get full eSATA speeds without it. Firewire 800 does not match up when it comes to raid, or SSD.

As for the vga splitter, I would look for a scan converter that converts a DVI input to VGA.

[psylozen]

I though the new 15" MBP unibody does not have an expresscard/34 slot anymore only the 17"
Its the biggest thing holding me back from buying one. I don't want to dish out the extra cash for the 17" MBP just for the express slot. To my knowledge there is no good way to get full eSATA speeds without it. Firewire 800 does not match up when it comes to raid, or SSD.

As for the vga splitter, I would look for a scan converter that converts a DVI input to VGA.

No, you're right... not quite sure what I was looking at. You'd think apple would offer consistent connectivity across the line. While the 13 and 15 don't have expresscard, they do have an sd slot which the 17 doesn't.

Oh well...

I'm going to get one of these enclosures instead: http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/EB2-S.html that'll give me firewire800, which the 15 mbp does have. However, this creates a new problem for me. I now don't have an available firewire port to plug my PD150 camera into anymore. I know that firewire devices can be daisychained... but what's that going to do to my throughput if I'm running my clips off the enclosure, and use the camera plugged into the enclosure as well?

As for the VGA splitter, I'd prefer to keep this a lot cheaper.. I'm currently looking at running the video output like this:
mbp -> dvi via mac adapter
dvi -> vga via standard issue dvi - vga adapter
vga -> 2x vga via standard issue vga splitter cable.

Unless someone's got a good reason not to do it like this, I'm gonna save a bit of money this round...

Your thoughts?

Thanks!

m.

[psylozen]

No, you're right... not quite sure what I was looking at. You'd think apple would offer consistent connectivity across the line. While the 13 and 15 don't have expresscard, they do have an sd slot which the 17 doesn't.

Now I remember what it was i was looking at that made me think our mbp has the expresscard slot. The actual physical laptop. And it *does* have the expresscard slot. and it *is* 15" unibody MBP. It's a 15" MacBook Pro 5,1. Apple must have shuffled the design around a bit...

so anyways, I guess my original question still stands: Can anybody recommend an ExpressCard/34 eSATA adapter that will work flawlessly on Snowleopard on a 15" unibody MBP?

Thanks!

m.

[bart]

I use a Digitus eSATA Expresscard every day and it always works. It was about half the price of the Expresscard Apple sells.

It does eject very easily but nothing a bit of duct tape can't fix