Never before , in the course of human history have so many been confused quite so easily. But HEY! Who am I to swim against a tide, so here goes my attempt at it. Oh hell, anyone who has an answer will do <G> looking to add a huge hard drive 160gig or better , firewire to my system ( I gotta get started on all that video stuff that's been piling up ) I have a working firewire pci card.. I know it's working cos SuSE's 8.1 version reports that the card is there and in place ready to ???? well, accept connections , I hope . but since there isn't anything to connect to it yet, I don't see any more point in dwelling on that ... I'm looking to add an external lacie hard drive ( Palladin: have drive will travel !) I can't find any reference to lacie drives accept the 80gig as the largest, it works, apparently ( www.linux1934.org ) so , in theory the newer version *might* .. but , tight money being what it is the comptroller wants more definite info that it will work w/o having to call in some expensive person to hook it up... ( I figure you connect the little wire doohicky in the back of the drive w/ the little hole on the card.. like , is that so hard ? Or am I just too blonde to see <sigh> ) I hope it would be sorta like the usb magic that happened w/ the 8.1 distro but , since I don't have access to a drive to test it ... Help, please -- j afterthought: A fool and his money ... Hey! Where's my wallet?!