Immanuel wrote:2) I don't see why not, provided the circumstances are as described (xite would be able to ignore z-link power, would not supply power itself, and would not be damaged if hooked to a device that supplies it)
Have you considered, that signals are sent with a certain current too, and you don't know about the wiring scheme ("pin configaration") of the Z-link on the cards and Xite and on the A16u and the 2496 ......
you are right, I don't know. all my knowledge is based on some vague details given by CW. the main idea is still (imho):
- they use the standard ieee1394 basic protocol stack
- they run proprietary extensions on top of that basic stack to make it carry 16 channel audio and clocking and such
- they use the basic firewire signaling and current scheme for not having to develop their own chips for it
- they use bus power as normal firewire does, too, but they missed out to make scope cards ignoring it or at least the basic protocol does not implement a mechanism to tell the supplying device not to send power during the negotiation phase (something that ordinary firewire surely has, because bus power would fry normal firewire to firewire connections as well, if there was no mechanism to prevent this, which is, although I not exactly know, most probably implemented in the protocol stack)
I still see a certain chance for this to work, but I would in no case recommend to test it, until explicitly corfirmed by SC, of course. I still have no answer from them, and there is still no xite hardware manual like there is for the pci cards.