Tascam FW1884, contol surface over midi

I am not sure the FW-1884 control surface plugin will work without Firewire. I think I tried to do what you want years ago with a motherboard with a poor firewire innterface and could not get it to work with the plugin. I pretty much have to select FW-1884 Control port in the Control surface selector to get mine to work. You may be able to use ACT to assign controls via MIDI but you will never get the total functionality of the firewire interface. 
If you had a deskptop PC, I would suggest a $25 Firewire card but with a Surface Pro, I dunno.
The 1884 is picky about interface chipsets. It wants a TI 1394 chipset board and a legacy 1394 driver.
Microsoft released a signed legacy 1394 driver for win 8.1 a while back but not sure what the Surface Pro has for I/O. If you could find a USB-2/3 to Firewire adapter with the TI 1394 chipset cheap I might start there. An express card to firewire may be better but not sure you have this option.
I know folks on the forum have commented about using the 1884 as a control surface only (no audio) but AFAIK they still were using the Firewire interface.
One thing you may want to try is to use the 1884 in Mackie HUI emulaion mode rather than the native mode. THis may allow you connect to sonar as a control surface only via MIDI. I know this works thru firewire but you will have to try it with MIDI only.
Google "FW-1884 Mackie HUI" and you will get to the Tascam doc which describes this. It is all still on the Tascam site.
 

If you don't have a Fire-Wire, the FW-1884 cannot function with midi, as this is how Controller Surface data transmits.
I use it; getting up in age now, but works remarkably well with Sonar Platinum 64 and Windows 8.
I am a bit nervous about the soon to be released Windows 10. 

Thank you guys !!!!
 
Thanks to you guys I didn't waste time in unworkable "solutions".
 
I have got the baby set up thru MIDI using an (very) old laptop to control it. (you could call it cheating but it works :D (perfectly)).
 
The old laptop has a firewireport installed the software and it works on the laptop. Now I downloaded the free software from musiclab.com (MIDI Device connection center) to "replicate" the MIDI data going and coming from the FW Control virtual MIDI fw 1884 control surface MIDI port to (in this case) the physical midi in and out ports 1 of the Tascam fw 1884 (in tascam FW 1884 control mode)  connected to the old laptop with firewire interface (no Texas Instruments chipset). 
 
I ran the installation of the fw control plugin on my MS surface pro (new laptop) and setup the FW 1884 cantrol surface to the USB midi device connected (thru USB) to the MS surface Pro en the MIDI in/out connectors to the TASCAM MIDI in/out 1 ports.
 
IT WORKS !!!!!!!  (little party)
 
But now.... I hoped the PC mosules could be controlled using this device. How do you guys control thr PC channel modules with the TASCAM fw 1884?
 
Thanks in advance.
 
Reza
 
  

microapp
The last Tascam driver predates the Pro-channel by years.

That is exactly right. No Pro-channel control from the FW-1884.

rezab
AAAARRRGGGHHHH :(
 
Thanks...
 
At least I have the workaround available to ACT the suckers.... (PC modules that is...)
 
 

And it looks good also :) 
(I have the FW1884 but I use firewire and I also use it as a audio interface)

I don't think ANYTHING (HW cntrl surface) properly controls prochannel.  As I've posted before, the best you'll get with any available control surfaces is fader, pan, solo, mute support,   Nothing else is reliable

No you're right but its more trouble than its worth really.   The mouse works fine for one knob at a time operation which is all you get with Alphatrack or many other interfaces.   I mainly use the alphatrack for bus faders since it very easy to navigate too.   The FW1884 s a PITA for busses.    Also I use it while tracking for transport (I track in a different space than where I mix and on a laptop)