Thanks fireberd - that's helpful advice!

solaceten
I have a Onyx400f too
Will soon be upgrading to Win7 from XP - Curious to know did you use the Win 7 driver on the mackie site, or the vista driver?

 
I don't see any reason to use the Vista driver with Windows 7 when there's a Windows 7 driver (the last gasp for the F series). However, the Vista installer includes a firmware update to the 400F and I don't know if the Win7 installer includes the same update. You might want to e-mail Mackie Tech Support about this.

Would also love to know if anyone knows of a linux driver.

No, nobody's written one, not Mackie, not Echo, not some smart Linux user who has a 400F (or a 1200F for that matter). The FFADO Project (Free Firewire Audio Driver Organization) for Linux reports it as "Unknown" which means that someone things it's important enough to put on the "someone should write a driver for this" but nobody has done it yet. The problem is that without some documentation for an existing driver it's nearly impossible to reverse engineer a driver from the hardware. And before you rag on Mackie for not releasing the driver documentation for a product that's no longer supported, understand that Mackie didn't write the driver, Echo did. It's Echo's intellectual property, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of what's in that driver is still part of some of their current products, or that a competitor would like to get hold of it. That's the way it goes with Software. It may be possible that some day an audio I/O driver for Linux might appear, but the real value of the Mackie Fs is with the built-in mixer and control panel, and nobody's going to write Linux software for that.
 
If you want to use a Mackie Firewire device with Linux, the original Onyx mixer with the Firewire option is "fully supported." But the i series isn't.
 

Just an update - I finally took the plunge and moved to Windows 8.1 this week. 
 
I am very happy to report my Mackie drivers seem to be working just fine. The touch is so much better in win 8 than 7 I am now going to sell my Mackie Control Universal Pro. :)

smallstonefan
Just an update - I finally took the plunge and moved to Windows 8.1 this week. 
 
I am very happy to report my Mackie drivers seem to be working just fine. The touch is so much better in win 8 than 7 I am now going to sell my Mackie Control Universal Pro. :)

What driver are you using? The 4.6 Vista version which includes a firmware update? (SetupOnyxFSeries_4.6.exe on the Mackie web site)?  I've been skittish about doing that update because the primary computer that I use the 400F with is still running Windows XP and will continue to do so until it decays into a pile of rust. Mackie never tested it with XP and doesn't want to bother. They said it might work. I suppose I could just use the 1200F with one of the Vista or Win7 computers.
 

Hi Mike,
 
I believe it is the Vista driver that I have installed...

The only exception is my Frontier Tranzport, I had to install it in a Vista compatibility mode (it does not have Win 7 specific drivers, only XP and Vista).
 
I just thought I'd mention, I have two Frontier Tranzport's both working on Windows 7 64bit - I did not have to load anything on my systems, just plugged them in and they both worked perfectly!
I just keep my fingers crossed that both my Tranzports's keep working - I find them indispensable and why they stopped making them I'll never know!
Nigel
 

Hello samllstonefan, I would like to comment you something about the mackie 1200F, I have one and can not get me to recognize the computer, I have a windows 7 64 bit and I would like you to tell me which driver and what kind of firewire cables must be used to operate I have seen that it works for you in windows 7, thanks and i hope you answer me

Hi Tony,
I believe I'm running the drivers from here:
http://www.mackie.com/products/1200f/downloads.html
 
Also, I heard bad things about firewire connectors on the motherboard, so I went with a Texas Instruments chip PCI card firewire and I've never had any problems. As for cables, I don't think I'm using anything special - probably the firewire cable that came with the Mackie. Good news too - it works perfectly in Windows 8.1 as well as Windows 7! :)
 
I hope this helps...

thanks for answering samllstonefan, I used the same drivers and can not get my computer to recognize the card, will be the firewire port on the motherboard, i will format the computer and I´ll buy a firewire card like yours , you know if it works on windows 7 64 bits?

I had it working great on Windows 7 64bit. Make sure your firewire port is enabled in the BIOS; it is possible to disable the on-board firewire.