looking for 6 pin power to my 4 pin firewire

im wondering if any pre existing adapters will do it from usb... im guessing not. i dont have expresscard.
im thinking of making something. so what i need is the definitive voltage that comes out of the 6 pin firewire power. i have heard a lot of different things, and i know that voltage cant be drawn like current (amps) can so it has to be a set value, but what i have heard is anything from 12 - 24v.
i dont really understand this, do you?
thanks.

 

That's a quote from wikipedia. Laptops don't have these voltages, I guess that to be the reason that only the 4-pin (unpowered) are ever seen on laptops.
How apple implements it is quite mysterious indeed.

Is it an option to get an expresscard? Those are available with 6-pins. But I doubt the power would be anywhere near 8 watts.

 

yea, thats exactly what i was thinking i wouldnt guess they can provide much power, plus i dont have a slot.
laptops do have these voltages from the adapter, but of course there are several separate voltages from the battery... they are likely less. maybe they could be enough though?

what i was thinking more specifically is that id have to use a voltage inverter. should be easy to find a 5v to 12v one and make it into usb, which will leave me with about 1watt lol if i understand my math. and unregulated voltage, well i just cant make sense of that at all.
it seems that in the end it is likely all is subject to the device in particular. looks like that will be my first realm of research, i think i can find that elswhere and definitely not here.

meanwhile, i have to find a way to directly access the battery voltage, or some port that i can draw some exra watts off of. anyone got any ideas for that?

its funny, this is kind of reminiscent of the diy vidock in relation to direct access to bandwidth, but here its power lol

 

Looked into it a little more.
Sorry ~ I overlooked the part you having no expresscard slot.

Is it an option using an external power adapter?
The early ipods were charged by an ieee1394/firewire cable, if I remember correctly.

 

im not actually out of options. i have an adapter but i want to be able to use this completely mobile. i also would like to help anyone who might want to do this. the adapter does not help, because it doesnt plug into the firewire port its a separate socket, and the adapter is ac.
im assuming that the early ipods were even more proprietary and used 6 pin firewire only on macbooks. i dont think 4 pin has any power whatsoever.

i dont understand what unregulated voltage is at all. i know laptop power supplys are regulated, which means it can be 19v whether its 110 or 240 on the other end. so how can it possibly be the opposite, "specified unregulted"

it seems batteries tend to be 10.8 volts. but they also tend to have 4 or 6 leads. can anyone explain this?
this is a soundcard, by the way. i just got a 6-4 pin cable, and cant get it to work with linux yet so ill probably stall this for a little bit. however, inadvertently i ran into a little app that told me how many watts its drawing. i think this can be done and im pretty committed