BIOS/firewire card help needed...

pikingrin

pikingrin

what is this?
Here's the short version of the situation: recently upgraded almost my entire setup; got a pre-fab PC with windows 7 (my first mistake, should have taken the time to roll my own), and, before I even turned it on, upgraded the 4GB RAM to 16GB. No issues there, it's recognized, etc. Well, I also put in a PCIe firewire card - if I need to open up the case to give the make/model let me know. The firewire card is not recognized. Either that or my brand-spankin'-new Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 is a jerk and just doesn't want to play nice and sync up. Latest drivers for the interface were downloaded tonight and no dice. The biggest issue is that I can't even access my BIOS to make sure that the PCI slot that contains the firewire card is active. Not sure if it could just be inactive by default but my research suggests that it's a possibility.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I got the firewire card off of amazon, it had the highest reviews (recently), and I assumed that it would automatically be recognized by the system. If this isn't the case, please educate me - I'm all ears as long as this gets figured out soon...
 
I cannot be of much help here but am interested because I too have had BIOS issues with a new build and recently trouble installing a 4 port USB 3.0 PCIe card.

When I fired up my new Asus MOBO a few months ago I found that "BIOS" has gone!
We now have " UEFI" . Reading the Msoft reasons it is obvious that a change had to be made but I confess I am totally lost in UEFI and the settings I thought I had changed did not stick. Fortunately the issues I was having have been resolved other ways (display settings) and so I remain ignorant of UEFI but working.

My other problem came when fitting the USB card (Via) to an older HP W7/64 machine. I expected the PC to find the card and either run the drivers or go on the net and find them? We are always told to get the latest mnfctr's drivers are we not?

No such luck so I inserted the CD which came with the card, again expecting an auto-setup. Nope. Opened the CD data and found lots of inscrutable code. One line referred to "32 bit driver" but nothing was marked for 64 bits. So I took a punt and found the biggest file on the disc, about 66meg and ran that.

Bazinga! The card was flying at last.

Two apps that might help are "Speccy" and "Belarc". The latter is very handy because it can extract the Windows reg' code.

Good luck.

Dave.
 
I think Jimmy is on the right track here. Pretty much every audio firewire device I have touched is extremely picky about what firewire card it will work with. I went through 2 before I got one that my board will play with.

Ecc could be right on the whole BIOS/UEFI thing, depending on the computer it could be using UEFI instead of standard BIOS. That shouldn't be causing your issue with firewire, it might explain why you can't find your way into the BIOS though.
 
jimmys69 said:
What is the firewire card? Specifically is it TI chipset?
Click to expand...

TI chipsets are highly (and often) recommended for firewire audio interfaces

Perversely, both my desktop and laptop have Via chipsets, and both play very nicely with Presonus.
 
Gecko, you are one lucky guy. I had 3 computers with firewire, all 3 different chipsets and none worked with my presonus board. I had to buy a TI chipset one. Good to hear there is another option though for the future if I need it.
 
I agree with your biggest issue. Why can you not access your BIOS? This is an odd thing to say. Every MB should have a pre-run key that you just mash repeatedly when you turn on the PC to give you access (F8 or F11, sometimes DELETE, and a few oddballs).

My best advice would be to look at this site. If you run down their list and come up flat, you may have a defective interface or card. Def get a Lindy TI card, or as a cheaper alternative that is supported, try this one with the VIA chipset that Focusrite says works. Camcorders and printers don't care about chipset, but a lot of audio interfaces are VERY picky.
 
BroKen_H said:
I agree with your biggest issue. Why can you not access your BIOS? This is an odd thing to say. Every MB should have a pre-run key that you just mash repeatedly when you turn on the PC to give you access (F8 or F11, sometimes DELETE, and a few oddballs).

My best advice would be to look at this site. If you run down their list and come up flat, you may have a defective interface or card. Def get a Lindy TI card, or as a cheaper alternative that is supported, try this one with the VIA chipset that Focusrite says works. Camcorders and printers don't care about chipset, but a lot of audio interfaces are VERY picky.
Click to expand...

Ues Ken, used to but with the later MOBOs you get this...
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/1615/asus-p8z68-v-pro-bios-1.jpg

Or something like it and I for one have no clue what to do with it! I was not very smart with the old BIOS but I could set boot orders and kill On Board Sound. Now I am all at sea.

Dave.
 
I deal with firewire card issues all the time in my day job.

Look to see if the firewire card is recognized in device manager.
>Start button
> Right click on Computer
>Select Manage
> Select Device Manager
>Look for IEEE1394 Bus....
>Click on Arrow and you should see the device.
>Right click on the device and select Update Driver.
>Select Browse my computer....
>Select Let me pick from list...
> Choose a different driver. You probably will see a TI driver or a VIA driver. Choose one of those. If it was already selected by default, then select 1394 OHCI Compliant...

Basically just changing the driver will cause it to be recognized. You can always go back and reselect the chip-specific driver if you need to.

If you find the firewire card is recognized and the chip-specific drivers are in use, then either the card is junk, which is quite likely, or you need to reload your interface drivers. I found that buying a firewire card is not the time to try to save money. I think this is the one we recommend to our customers:

SIIG Model NN-E38012-S3 PCI Express to 1394 Card Add-On Card - Newegg.com

For the BIOS issue, not sure what is going on. You should have access.
 
ecc83 said:
Ues Ken, used to but with the later MOBOs you get this...
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/1615/asus-p8z68-v-pro-bios-1.jpg

Or something like it and I for one have no clue what to do with it! I was not very smart with the old BIOS but I could set boot orders and kill On Board Sound. Now I am all at sea.

Dave.
Click to expand...

Holy cow, dude! That's just the overclock and fan tweak screen. Is that all the bios control new Mobos are giving? What about access to UEFI or AHCI? RAM clock and voltage? Wow, how limiting!
 
BroKen_H said:
Holy cow, dude! That's just the overclock and fan tweak screen. Is that all the bios control new Mobos are giving? What about access to UEFI or AHCI? RAM clock and voltage? Wow, how limiting!
Click to expand...

Don't know! (weeps!) I googled about for some UEFI screenshots and that is the best I can find. I cannot, by definition screen grab this Asus MOBO in setup mode!

I will confess my lack of knowledge of UEFI is born mostly of sheer terror! I am nervous enough hacking the BIOS on my old P4 ..That new screen just scares me witless coz I don't know where to start!

Chilli: Know any good books?

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Chilli: Know any good books?

Dave.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't. But you can look around. It's really just the same as a BIOS maybe different layout and you can use your mouse. You get more options, but its all to do the same thing.
 
polarity said:
Gecko, you are one lucky guy. I had 3 computers with firewire, all 3 different chipsets and none worked with my presonus board. I had to buy a TI chipset one. Good to hear there is another option though for the future if I need it.
Click to expand...


Somewhere on its website, Presonus lists the chipsets that its units are compatible with.
 
Yeah I came across that finally after purchasing the board. I kept going down the list looking for them and everyone I searched for was out of stock. I finally got one though
 
My parents have been in town for the past few days so I haven't even tried to mess with it. I'm working with it right now and just see 2 driver options when I check it out through device manager. OHCI compliant host controller and OHCI compliant host controller (Legacy). Not sure what the deal is; neither of them work when restarting and trying to sync up the interface.

I do know that it's got a JMicron chipset and that, according to the mfgs FAQ, it's natively supported in Win7 so I shouldn't have to download any drivers.

What I will say about the BIOS though, is that I went through the list of things from Sweetwater to optimize my system - all except the BIOS setting to over clock - only because I couldn't get to it after I had done all of the other things on the list from Sweetwater's website. Not knocking them at all, that's where I get all of my gear, just should have checked to see what the access key was when starting up. F2 gets me to some windows test setup and none of the other function keys does anything. Pretty sure I've tried DEL, too, but I'll try that again to see if that's the one. Not sure what the UEFI is; it's been too long since I've messed with this crap haha! Guess I've got more research to do now...
 
Last edited:
If you download and run "Speccy" that will give you the model number of the MOBO and then you should be able to find a .pdf manual for it and that should tell you how to boot into BIOS.

Dave.
 
So after over an hour troubleshooting with the mfg yesterday, I went ahead and ordered a SIIG card with TI chipset. It just came in and I'm hoping that at least one of my issues is dealt with. Not too concerned with over clocking just yet; will figure out the BIOS next... As long as my interface works, life will be good. Thanks to everyone for the input!
 
Chili said:
I deal with firewire card issues all the time in my day job.

Look to see if the firewire card is recognized in device manager.
>Start button
> Right click on Computer
>Select Manage
> Select Device Manager
>Look for IEEE1394 Bus....
>Click on Arrow and you should see the device.
>Right click on the device and select Update Driver.
>Select Browse my computer....
>Select Let me pick from list...
> Choose a different driver. You probably will see a TI driver or a VIA driver. Choose one of those. If it was already selected by default, then select 1394 OHCI Compliant...

Basically just changing the driver will cause it to be recognized. You can always go back and reselect the chip-specific driver if you need to.

If you find the firewire card is recognized and the chip-specific drivers are in use, then either the card is junk, which is quite likely, or you need to reload your interface drivers. I found that buying a firewire card is not the time to try to save money. I think this is the one we recommend to our customers:

SIIG Model NN-E38012-S3 PCI Express to 1394 Card Add-On Card - Newegg.com

For the BIOS issue, not sure what is going on. You should have access.
Click to expand...

So, for anyone else that's been following this thread, I tried all of the things in the list here and nothing worked. Turned out the cheap card I got didn't have the right chipset - note for all: JMicron chipsets don't speak to Focusrite saffire pro 40s at all. Got in the SIIG card today, thank you Amazon for having distribution in Indy, plugged it in and it synced right up without any issues. Worked flawlessly and, honestly, wasn't but $10 more than what I spent on the other card. Thanks again!
 
Excellent. Glad to hear it worked out for you. And thanks for confirming the notion that no one should go cheap on FireWire cards.
 
Chili said:
Excellent. Glad to hear it worked out for you. And thanks for confirming the notion that no one should go cheap on FireWire cards.
Click to expand...

Indeed^! And can I add that "back in the day" when every fifth forum question seemed to be to do with audio problems and Fussywire! Any Firewire card bought should be JUST FW400. Not FW+USB and not FW800+FW400. And TI chipset of course.

Hah! Just noticed that the SIG card suggested IS FW800! Just goes to show that nothing is cast in stone when it comes to computers. The advice always USED to be as I stated!

Dave.
 
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