firewire: macbookpro vs adk vs sonica

[bf1hipcat]

I've been reviewing laptops before purchase. My goal is combo live/home DAW use, and I am a bit perplexed by the firewire issue. As I understand it, a TI 1394 chipset is vital for compatibility/functionality, and adding a firewire expresscard with TI chipset offers limited improvement on laptops with off-brand chipsets, since the expresscard still uses the old internal firewire bus. People in audio forums are complaining that their ricoh chipsets don't work, and that adding an expresscard 'barely improves' the performance.

The puzzling thing is that both of these custom audio laptops DO come with external TI expresscards for firewire:

http://www.shop-sonica.com/d2500_specs.cfm

http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/viewsystem.cfm?recordid=118

If upgrading to an external firewire expresscard really is an effective solution, why not buy an entry-level hp with 7,200 rpm hdd and intel i7 for less than $1000 and add the firewire expresscard and call it a day?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157113

any input on this question much appreciated

 

[dgatwood]

I've been reviewing laptops before purchase. My goal is combo live/home DAW use, and I am a bit perplexed by the firewire issue. As I understand it, a TI 1394 chipset is vital for compatibility/functionality, and adding a firewire expresscard with TI chipset offers limited improvement on laptops with off-brand chipsets, since the expresscard still uses the old internal firewire bus.

Both of these statements are incorrect.

First, a FireWire ExpressCard card does not use the internal FireWire bus in any way. In the rare cases where this does not improve things, the problem lies elsewhere (e.g. IRQ steering).

Second, although TI chipsets get the broadest testing by FireWire hardware vendors, both VIA and Lucent/Agere chipsets are generally solid with the vast majority of hardware you throw at them, and in the end, the exceptions have almost invariably ended up being shown to be firmware bugs in the devices causing them to send out illegal packets, not problems with the FireWire chipset itself.

NEC FireWire chips were also apparently problematic at one time; no idea if that's still the case.

Ricoh FireWire chipsets are a train wreck.

People in audio forums are complaining that their ricoh chipsets don't work, and that adding an expresscard 'barely improves' the performance.

Any manufacturer that uses such a junk FireWire chipset probably cut huge corners in lots of other places, e.g. the ExpressCard support chipset. If that is a Ricoh chip, I think you're pretty much screwed unless somebody figures out a way to fix whatever bus timing issues are causing these problems. That said, I am not a PCI engineer, so don't ask me what those problems might be.... Maybe PCI latency timer settings?

The point is that it's the combo Ricoh chips that provide FireWire, SD cards, and ExpressCard support that cause the worst problems. It's not because the FireWire chip is by Ricoh, but rather because the FireWire chip hangs off a PCI bus provided by a Ricoh chip that's either broken or incorrectly configured by the BIOS (or both).

 

[dastrick]

Both of these statements are incorrect.

First, a FireWire ExpressCard card does not use the internal FireWire bus in any way. In the rare cases where this does not improve things, the problem lies elsewhere (e.g. IRQ steering).

Second, although TI chipsets get the broadest testing by FireWire hardware vendors, both VIA and Lucent/Agere chipsets are generally solid with the vast majority of hardware you throw at them, and in the end, the exceptions have almost invariably ended up being shown to be firmware bugs in the devices causing them to send out illegal packets, not problems with the FireWire chipset itself.

NEC FireWire chips were also apparently problematic at one time; no idea if that's still the case.

Ricoh FireWire chipsets are a train wreck.



Any manufacturer that uses such a junk FireWire chipset probably cut huge corners in lots of other places, e.g. the ExpressCard support chipset. If that is a Ricoh chip, I think you're pretty much screwed unless somebody figures out a way to fix whatever bus timing issues are causing these problems. That said, I am not a PCI engineer, so don't ask me what those problems might be.... Maybe PCI latency timer settings?

The point is that it's the combo Ricoh chips that provide FireWire, SD cards, and ExpressCard support that cause the worst problems. It's not because the FireWire chip is by Ricoh, but rather because the FireWire chip hangs off a PCI bus provided by a Ricoh chip that's either broken or incorrectly configured by the BIOS (or both).

You're so smart.