I'm looking to update my Laptop DAW from an old HP Pavilion Duo Core to something a bit more powerful. There's only one condition - it needs to have Firewire. I'll explain:
I use an old Edirol FA-101 soundcard which has been my best friend since the turn of the century. It has been long discontinued and surpassed by other soundcards, but it is amazing for zero latency, preamps and input counts. The driver updates were discontinued after win8, but when I updated my HP laptop to W10, I found it still worked with the W7 drivers, so no need to change soundcard then.
My dilema is: If I update to a new laptop with USB 2 & 3 inputs only (Thunderbird too expensive), I have to update my soundcard too (which comes with all the risks of latency issues and compatability issues), thus I'd prefer to buy a secondhand laptop with Firewire inputs so as to continue to use my 'best friend'. If it ain't broke.....
I know that there have been issues raised in forums before about the chipset compatibility of Texas T1 chipsets v. others, but I know that Fa-101 works just fine with HP Pavilion and W10 (up to 48khz) & works seemlessly on my ancient Clevo (up to 192khz).
My question: Has anyone gone on a similar adventure of updating to a laptop but using older Firewire soundcards? And could they recommend an older laptop that would meet my needs? [I'm thinking i5, 8Gb Ram - nothing too big as I'm a minimalist: guitar, vocal, 10 tracks per sessions +/-] It's a rabbit hole out there and I've been losing too much time browsing the net trying to understand what works and what doesnt - time I should be spending doing music :(
 
Thanks in advanced for any help.

Good luck finding a current generation laptop with Firewire.  
FWIW, You can grab a Focusrite 2i2 for $149.
 
Higher-end laptops have Z170x chipset which provides Thunderbolt via USB-C port.
Right now, I'm not aware of a USB-C to Firewire adapter.
That means getting a Thunderbolt-3 to Thunderbolt adapter (USB-C to Thunderbolt)... *and* using a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter.  This is going to cost about as much as the Focusrite 2i2.  
Running the two adapters off Thunderbolt-3, I've seen reports of high CPU use on one CPU core.
That issue may or may not get resolved.
 
Lower cost laptops won't have Firewire or Thunderbolt.
 
 

Are you in the USA?
 
I have an ADK (earlier generation, clevo based laptop) 9000X i5 with 6gb RAM and three hard drives (750gb each, 7200RPM). I no longer need it.
 
It has firewire and PciExpress port. As well it has USB 2 and USB 3 ports.
 
It's already upgraded to Win10 Pro.
 
I have two power supplies (one for home and one for the road) and an SKB travel case (3" foam lined all around).
 
PM me if you are interested.

If you are willing to switch to a modern desktop, there are PCIe add-on boards that come with TI FireWire chips.
 
I noticed the trend to eliminate on-board FireWire ports from newer desktop motherboards, as well as most modern laptops.  I believe Apple was the first one to kill it.
 
My ten year old laptop and Intel desktop boards all came with on-board FireWire chips that worked well with my M-Audio FireWire 410.
 
I did not want to replace the FW-410, so I went with a PCIe 1394 Controller for my latest desktop build.  It works well with Windows 10 using the old Windows 7 drivers from M-Audio.
 
I'm out of luck with my latest laptop, however.  I will have to get a USB audio interface if I want to record on that.

Hi Bapu, thanks for the offer. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I'm in Italy, so I imagine the postage would be a killer.
I'd been using an ancient Clevo laptop for years, because it plays so nicely with my FA101 firewire device, before opting for an HP, which strangely couldn't handle 192kHz recordings despite having a better spec than the Clevo ?? The laptop you're proposing sounds awesome...three HDs...I wouldn't know what to do with all of them!
In the end I took the plunge and bought a bit of old-tech from ebay. HP with Core i5 and that much desired Firewire port. Got it dirt cheap, so if things go awry I can always give that one to my wife and get another.
Maybe I'll go the way of Abacab and get a desktop.
I'll let you know how it works out.
Thanks.

I got my new (old) laptop. An HP Pavilion DV6 with the all important Firewire port.
It's an old model running an old i5 CPU, but I'm already seeing an improvement from my old Duo-Core, and I even managed to resurrect a session I did at 192 sample rate on my Clevo, which my other laptop refused to load up.
I've still got to upgrade the RAM, and the HD to an SSD, but so far it's doing what I want it to do, which is, work with my old Edirol FA101 soundcard. Hurray. Latency is still not as good as the Clevo was, but I've heard that this is a problem with the Edirol drivers for Windows 7. Downside - Windows 7 is being a little bit temperamental at times. sometimes soundcards are not recognised or I get stuttering....might just need more RAM...or maybe to upgrade to W10 again.
Best of all, I installed Sonar Platinum without problems (sweet) and all plugins and VSTs, so all I have to do now is free up some time to actually do some music....;)