Firewire 6 pin to 4 pin?

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10538

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Hello, I have an Alienware area 51 m7700 laptop and I bought the Tascam FW-1082 interface to use with it (running Cubase LE), anyway, the Tascam has a 6 pin firewire port and my laptop has a 4 pin port with no spaces available for adding a 6 pin port, what can I do? I emailed this problem to Tascam and they replied:
"The FW-1082 requires a 6-pin Firewire connection. We do not support it's ooperation with 4-pin".

They didn't give me any alternatives, advice, suggestions or anything. They couldn't even answer whether the FW-1082 required the power provided by the 2 extra pins on the 6 pin firewire port, which is all I think the extra 2 pins do. I could get a PCMCIA express card for my laptop that has a 6 pin port on it but would that work, will it have the 2 12 volt power pins activated or not? If anybody has any suggestions or anything, please help, I am at wits end.
 
My Sunix card has the option for you to plug a DC adaptor in to send the 12v down the 6-pin. A quick look at the Fw-1082 specs tells me that it has a 12v power supply anyway, in which case I'd just give the 4-pin to 6-pin a try.
 
4 pin = data
extra 2 pins = electrial power for the device.

If you have a device plugged in with its own power supply, there is NO need for a 6pin cable.
 
TimOBrien said:
4 pin = data
extra 2 pins = electrial power for the device.

If you have a device plugged in with its own power supply, there is NO need for a 6pin cable.
Click to expand...

That's what I was trying to say, but I couldn't work out how to say it in simple terms :D:rolleyes:
 
10538 said:
Hello, I have an Alienware area 51 m7700 laptop and I bought the Tascam FW-1082 interface to use with it (running Cubase LE), anyway, the Tascam has a 6 pin firewire port and my laptop has a 4 pin port with no spaces available for adding a 6 pin port, what can I do? I emailed this problem to Tascam and they replied:
"The FW-1082 requires a 6-pin Firewire connection. We do not support it's ooperation with 4-pin".
Click to expand...

You got a clueless tech. The device has a separate power supply, so unless they did something unbelievably brain dead like powering the PHY silicon exclusively from bus power (you might be able to do it if you really, really tried), it should work fine with a 4-pin to 6-pin cable. I've never heard of a non-bus-powered device that didn't work in such a configuration.
 
Thank you very much, I hope that is the case but it is just nice to actually have someone trying to help me out. The last 2 weeks dealing with Tascam and Alienware support has been very disheartening, as well as asking questions which get no response on other forums. I could not understand why a 4 pin to 6 pin cable wouldn't work if the only thing the other 2 pins did was provide power and it seems to look like the 1082 already has power via the power supply. The other thing I was wondering was, if I did need power via the 6 pin firewire port, would one of the PCMCIA cards with a 6 pin firewire port work? Anyway, I really do appreciate you wonderful people who took the time to try and help me out, as I am sure you other recording fanatics understand how urgent it seems when your hard earned equipment just seems to be not able to get your task done. Thanks for real.
 
I have a Tascam FW-1804 and was given the same advice from Tascam when I queried this and was told to use a pcmcia firewire card in my laptop although the laptop has a 4pin port, as the firewire card provides no power to its 6pin ports I don't see the difference but could not get any explanation from Tascam on the matter, I also have a MOTU 8pre and that does support the use of a 4pin port.It would be interesting to know if anybody has ignored Tascam's advice and used a 4pin port.
 
I hooked the 2 up with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter cable. I could monitor the sound coming from Cubase LE out of the 1082 headphone outs but the transport controls or faders do not seem to be doing anything in the software.
 
10538 said:
I hooked the 2 up with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter cable. I could monitor the sound coming from Cubase LE out of the 1082 headphone outs but the transport controls or faders do not seem to be doing anything in the software.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a software bug.
 
10538 said:
I hooked the 2 up with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter cable. I could monitor the sound coming from Cubase LE out of the 1082 headphone outs but the transport controls or faders do not seem to be doing anything in the software.
Click to expand...

Is Cubase configured correctly to work with the 1082?

I'd help but I don't know a lot about Cubase!
 
I'm new to this so it is probably something I did wrong in configuring the software for the 1082 interface, I am gonna check out the Cubase forum and see if I am configuring everything right. Thank you all very much for the suggestions though, atleast I am sort of on the right track. I'll post what I find out.
 
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