help with pcmcia firewire

  • Thread starter Thread starter tcramon
  • Start date Start date
T

tcramon

New member
Hi, first post here---gotten alot of good information by lurking already.

I have an otherwise pretty decent Dell laptop (2.2 ghz, 1gig ram, 5400 rpm hd) that didn't come with a firewire (FW) connection. I want to use it for multi-track recording (at least 4 simultaneous) with FW based hardware like the Yamaha 01X, ProTools, or the nifty new Tascam I just read about.

I can get a FW pcmcia card for less than $100, but the skeptic in me wonders if this is not as good an option as it seems --- slower data rates than regular FW or such?

Thanks for any help.

-T
 
I use a firewire cardbus adapter in my laptop. It seems to be the full deal firwire from what I can tell... Really haven't pushed it or anything. Just some digital video. ..

One thing I kinda wish I had was a firewire carbus with the detachable plug part. My pcm slots are on the side and the card gets in the way so I wall have to keep the card out. Also I could only find USB 2.0 card that had the fixed plugs so now I can't even use both firewire and USB2.0 at the same time unless I amdon the docking station. They just won't both it...
 
thanks for the input, LAZI.

I have an additional question now: Is it a big deal to not have bus power for firewire? I know it will depend on the application, but since I'm new to this, I wonder if there are many audio products that depend on bus power?
 
I kinda doubt that should be a concern... I'm no pro though...

I'm not really sure about anything that would require buss power with firewire. Almost anything firewire I can imagine will have it's own power supply. My firewire cardbus adapter (ADAPTEC FIRECONNECT AFW-1430) has a dc jack built in for an optional power supply to provide power to anything that might require it. I always figure this would be something i'd never need to use.

Peace...
 
FYI, from what I was told from Magna Chassis, the people that make expansion chassis for Pro Tools stuff, was that Cardbus was the same throughput as PCI, which is 133MB/sec.

Now with realistic throughput being somewhat lower, even FW800 should be possible, being at 100MB/sec.

All this I guess can be taken with a grain of salt, considering it was from one tech guy.
 
Thanks for the input, everyone. Looks like a FW card will be the way to go for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top