I am planning to buy a Presonus inspire preamp, which needs to be connected to my laptop by firewire. However, I have just realised that my laptop doesn't have a firewire port. When asking for advise, the general consensus seemed to be I needed a PCMCIA card to go from USB to firewire. However, from random searches on google I found the below pieces of hardware which say they work as USB to Firewire adaptors, do these work?
You can get a GOOD QUALITY PCMCIA card for about £6 or $10 look for one with a TI chipset. The one I got was a PLUSCOM 2 port 1394 firewire cardbus it has the VT6306 chipset. Try and avoid the combi cards with a firewire and usb post, these can cause a lot of conflicts.
I use mine all the time with my Yamaha N12 digital mixing console when I'm location recording with the laptop and it never fails me.
Presonus makes a USB interface, the Audiobox USB. I personally would go with whatever style interface your computer supports in hardware, rather than going through some sort of conversion.
But as LemonTree says, a PCMCIA card would be a lot better option than that little converter you linked to. That just looks like trouble to me!
I wouldn't recommend getting that adapter either, if anything get a pcmcia express card by Rain Recording or SIIG Let me know if you need any help. -jpleasant@presonus.com