the firewire thing is a kind of a big deal for me.

modern asus boards come with thunderbolt connectors on the board, but you have to buy a pci-e card. i'd then have to get an adapter.

the purpose of the setup is intrinsically connected to a 1394a device. any machine in this space needs to be designed to utilize that device. i will not be updating that device.

i'm not really happy about bringing a 1394a pci card into it, but it's certainly better than using the thunderbolt header..

i'm going to exhaust my options with asus. but i may have to move on.