I guess I'll have to pick up a copy of 8.1 and "test" things out.
I've got a spare drive or two laying about.
Thanks again for the update Kristoffer!
 
T

FWIW Tom, I bought Win8 for about 15$ (upgrade from Win7).
Don't know if they have the same offer still - but you can't beat that :)
 
 
 

Great thread.
I have converted my work PC and laptop to Win 8.1. My studio PC is still win 7 but I am looking to upgrade to newer hardware and would like to move that to win 8.1 as well but since I have an FW-1884 I have been considering my options. I have win7 working so well (~3ms roundtrip latency at 44.1Khz/24bit) that I will probably take the time to temporarily move my Tascam from the studio over to my work win 8.1 (soon 8.1.1) PC just to make sure there are no unforeseen issues (the work PC has a mbrd TI firewire). I have experience in test mode on Win 7 so that is not a problem. I really would not want to run in test mode forever. I am seriously considering signing the WIn 7 legacy driver. I need to buy a driver signing cert for some other USB related projects I am doing anyway and I have self-signed other software so this is not new to me.
Has anyone here done the pre-amp mod ? I bought my Tascam used and channel 7 and 8 preamps are gone due to the phantom power thing. I can build the replacement pre-amps no problem but dissassembling the Tascam looks like a real bear.
Also do any of you experience the firewire in-sync problem? If the Tascam is cold (it is in my basement studio) it will not sync. THe firewire LED is on and it reads the version info but it will not sync. If I turn it on for 5 mins or so first and then boot the PC, it always syncs and is then rock solid. I was even thinking about putting some resistors inside near the firewire chip and connected to a  12V wall-wart as a makeshift heater. My friend just leaves his Tascam on all the time. I have read the tech bulletin regarding the caps on the firewire traces but this seems a little iffy to me. Has anyone done this mod?
And Tom D., thanks for sharing all the great info on the FW-1884.
Michael
 
 

kristoffer,
The cheap update ended this time last year. I got 2 for I think $20 each. I should have gotten more. It was great because you could install the win 8 upgrade and still keep your old OS and dual boot.
It is good to know there are still some Tascam users out there. I will keep mine until I can't fix it anymore.
Michael

microapp
Great thread.
I have converted my work PC and laptop to Win 8.1. My studio PC is still win 7 but I am looking to upgrade to newer hardware and would like to move that to win 8.1 as well but since I have an FW-1884 I have been considering my options. I have win7 working so well (~3ms roundtrip latency at 44.1Khz/24bit) that I will probably take the time to temporarily move my Tascam from the studio over to my work win 8.1 (soon 8.1.1) PC just to make sure there are no unforeseen issues (the work PC has a mbrd TI firewire). I have experience in test mode on Win 7 so that is not a problem. I really would not want to run in test mode forever. I am seriously considering signing the WIn 7 legacy driver. I need to buy a driver signing cert for some other USB related projects I am doing anyway and I have self-signed other software so this is not new to me.
Has anyone here done the pre-amp mod ? I bought my Tascam used and channel 7 and 8 preamps are gone due to the phantom power thing. I can build the replacement pre-amps no problem but dissassembling the Tascam looks like a real bear.
Also do any of you experience the firewire in-sync problem? If the Tascam is cold (it is in my basement studio) it will not sync. THe firewire LED is on and it reads the version info but it will not sync. If I turn it on for 5 mins or so first and then boot the PC, it always syncs and is then rock solid. I was even thinking about putting some resistors inside near the firewire chip and connected to a  12V wall-wart as a makeshift heater. My friend just leaves his Tascam on all the time. I have read the tech bulletin regarding the caps on the firewire traces but this seems a little iffy to me. Has anyone done this mod?
And Tom D., thanks for sharing all the great info on the FW-1884.
Michael
 
 

Great to hear from more FW1884 users!
I'd be interested in a signed driver :) I have no idea why though, what difference should it make? 
(I have disabled the driver signing test at booting)
 
I havent had any sync issues, could it be related to my settings for the sync? I have SPDIF in as default (my POD HD500 is connected to FW1884 by SPDIF). I set it to SPDIF in, because I experienced clicks and noises when it was set to "internal" on clock source.
But, when I think of it: before I had my HD500 connected by SPDIF, I did not have any sync issues either. 
 
I have usually had my FW1884 powered on 24/7, but lately it has suddenly (by no warning) making a horrible noise. This has happened 2 times (at night). The sound has been extremely high, I actually thought my monitors was going to blow (they did not!) 
The noise was constant until I set the master fader to 0. Then it disappeared. 
So from now: I'm keeping it off when I dont use it.
 
It is pretty cold in my basement where I have my studio, about 16-17 degrees C. (thats 62-64 in Fahrenheit? 
 
 
About your preamps, would it not be easier to buy a ADAT interface? I think you get 8 "new" preamps then.
I've looked at Behringer ADA8000, but other would probably be better.
 
 
-Kristoffer

As I have mentioned many times I always doubted the warm up issue. But I too have problems at 60 degrees and have to allow a little warm up time. Cycle the 1884 off and on and all is rock solid.
I think I too would be happy to contribute to having "signed" driver.
Please let us know.
Tom

Re: legacy driver signing.
I went to download the free Win8 WDK (driver development kit) and to my horror discovered that starting with win 8 WDK Microsoft requires purchase of Visual Studio Pro 2013 in order to install WDK 8 . This is like $1600 and I hate VS anyway. Previously one could use the free Visual Studio Express to create drivers. I don't even need to do this I simply need to sign an existing driver but the signing utilities do not install without VS 2013.  I think I have the Win 7 WDK somewhere but I need to make sure that win 8 will accept drivers signed by this. (It should). I will keep you guys posted. 
Michael

I don't know about $1600 worth of "happy"!
 

 
T

Ouch 
 
What is the difference to a driver which is signed, vs a unsigned driver? 

A signed driver is wrapped into a .cat (catalog) file which includes a hash of the .cat files AND a security certificate that traces back to Microsoft. All x64 versions of Windows starting with Vista require signed drivers to install/run without complaints from the OS. Win 8 will not run in normal mode with an unsigned driver.
Basically for win 7 MS analyzed all the Blue-screen-of death data they had collected and determined that like 90% of all crashes were caused by faulty drivers. They came up with a Qualification program (WHQL) which requires new drivers to pass some quality tests (for a fee of course). And the drivers also had to be signed with a certificate from a Certificate Authority (Verisign,Thawte, etc) to prove they were authentic. Think of it like an SSL certificate that tells your browser the connection to an https site is secure. So if your driver has not passed WHQL, in WIn 8 you can still install it after a warning but if it is not signed, it will not even install. You have to put your PC into a special test mode (see above posts) to make it work. With a signed driver, you do not need the test mode. To sign a  driver, you need some MS utilities and you have to buy a signing certificate from one of the authorities.
So if you just want to use an unsigned driver for your own pc, you can put it in test mode. If you have to distribute a driver with some hardware (this is my case) having the end user have to use use test mode is not acceptable. I had a major customer running my USB hardware all over the world. The hardware was designed for XP so no signed driver needed. Now they are moving to Win 7/64 and win 8/64 and I need to provide a signed driver.
If I had to to do this, I figured I may as well sign the WIn7 legacy firewire driver for all of us left out in the cold by MS. Actually I may have a workaround for my customers (but I won't get into that). If I have to shell out $1600 bucks for VS 2013 forget it. The signing cert is only like $100.
Michael