jerryfloyd
The SIIG firewire express card (with TI chipset) turned up a couple of days ago. I haven't been able to get it to work at all with the Saphire! Can't even play back an MP3. My laptop recognises it fine. I connected a firewire hard drive to it and it transfers data fine too. But with the Saphire, the firewire light flashes every couple of seconds and mix control struggles to load. As soon as I put the cheap VIA based card back in, the FW light stays solid and things work fine again.
I uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers etc but nothing seems to make the FW light stop flashing and audio play. There are no spikes with DPC latency checker.
It's nice that I have the other card working but as it's cheap the ports are pretty loose etc. Always worried the cable will fall out.
It's a shame cause the SIIG is an expensive little card with excellent build quality. Was thinking it might give me a little performance boost too but not to be.
My laptop must prefer the VIA chipset which is interesting. Maybe I should look for a better built VIA based card?
Any ideas on getting the SIIG card to work eratu?
Cheers,
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
Bummed to hear you're having problems. That SIIG card is probably the same model I have (if it's the firewire 400 version, not 800 version), and it works great for me (and a lot of other people). I actually already had one from another laptop, and my ADK laptop came with the exact same model as well, so you have one of the best firewire cards as far as I know. I see you're using Win XP Pro, and I'm using Win 7 Pro, so I'm wondering if there's a driver issue -- either with the SIIG or with the Saffire on XP that might be causing the issue.
I wish I had some extra trick up my sleeve for you, but as you know, laptop pro audio is a tricky business with a thousand factors. Besides contacting Focusrite (which may or may not be a waste of time on an issue like this), I'd try a completely clean re-install of all drivers by uninstalling and reinstalling, and possibly cleaning your registry. That may require some more homework on your part, I can't help with specific entries that might need to be scrubbed.
If that doesn't do it, I'd *personally* move on to plan B, which is a completely fresh OS install, with all the normal caveats of carefully backing up your data. Or, even better yet, plan C, I'd take this chance to move to Win 7, to be quite frank.
That's a big decision, though, since you've already got a basically working system right now with the VIA card. So I would NOT recommend this necessarily for anyone except for the masochistic type who wants to put themselves through a lot of testing, tweaking (and sometimes torture). Again, this is just what I would personally do, and have done many times for my laptop DAW experiments in the last several months. But only do that if you do it the right way and are committed. Otherwise, I'd suggest plan D, which is to get rid of the SIIG and try another card or just live with the VIA you currently have. :(
If you go with plan C, Win 7, this is what I'd personally do. I'm not recommending this, just stating what I would literally do:
1) I would go buy a new laptop hard drive.
2) I would go buy Win 7
3) I would lovingly remove the existing hard drive with your working XP Pro config and keep it very, very safe, to revert back to if all else fails.
4) I would install the new hard drive.
5) I would install an imaging tool like BootIt Next Generation by TeraByte Unlimited on the new hard right before the OS, then I could partition the hard drive how I want to before installation and also make drive images along the way, without having to boot up into the OS itself. This is an advanced step but I do it for situations like this where there is a lot of potential for driver issues.
6) I would install Win 7, taking snapshot images along the way with BootIt NG. I'd first get Windows up and running, trying to use mostly Win 7 default drivers, except for the tricky ones like graphics card. I'd be monitoring the DPC after every driver install to see if the new driver is one that behaves badly, then revert back if it does, or disable it.
7) Once I have a clean, mostly generic Win 7 install with clean DPC, I'd insert the SIIG, and let Win 7 use its own driver.
8) And then I'd install the Saffire.
9) Then install Sonar, etc.
That's what I'd do. :) But then again, that requires spending more money and a lot more time. If THAT all doesn't work, then I'd consider reverting back to the original hard drive, and perhaps returning the SIIG firewire card or going to plan D or E, or F... :) Some people might call that insane, and I'd have to agree, but it's worked for me with some laptops.
In the end, though, no laptop I've done that with comes close to the ADK laptop I have, which has extremely good DPC latency and superb low-latency performance, yes, with that SIIG card and with that Saffire device.
As always, best of luck! I hope it works out!
post edited by eratu - 2010/06/10 09:48:15