Laptop PCMCIA FIREWIRE Problems. GRRRR

iwantmypie

iwantmypie

New member
A lot is going on here with my problem but I'll try to get to the point. I recently purchased a PCMCIA Firewire card for my laptop so I would be able to hook up a recently purchased M-Audio Firewire Audiophile to it. So I go ahead and install everything and Windows seems to think everything is installed and working. So I go ahead and open up the M-Audio Control Panel and I can see that my audio signal is going into the program but for some reason won't go out the the rest of the computer, if this makes sense. I am not able to play anything back through the Audiophile or record anything. The specs for my computer are as followed

HP Pavillion Notebook ze4805US
AMD Athlon XP2800+ 2.12 GHz
512MB RAM
Windows XP Professional SP2
Cardbus Chipset is TI
Firewire Card is VIA

I had it working ONCE during the start up of Windows where the music plays but that was only for 2 seconds and then it cut out. I have done everything from uninstalling SP2 to loading the Hotfixes. I've disabled any unused ports and have no IRQ problems, nothing seems to conflict here. M-Audio technical support is no help at all and same with HP who won't help my unless I buy another warrenty. Now here is where it gets interesting.

I decided to take the same PCMCIA Firewire card and install it on my father's older laptop to see how it works. Go figure, it works perfectly, without and hitches. Here are his laptops specs

Dell Notebook C500
Intel Pentium III
128MB RAM
Windows 2000 Professional SP4
Same TI Chipset
Same PCMCIA VIA Card

I've tried everything that I possibly could do to fix this problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you
 
I'm not exactly sure. I'm looking under Device Manager to find it but I'm not seeing anything. I know there is one and I think I remember reading that on my laptop, its the same as the Mobile processor or something like that. Maybe I'm conpletly wrong. I don't remember.
 
You can find out by going to control panel-->system-->hardware-->device manager-->display adapters

It's likely integrated, espically if you don't know. Anyway, the idea is it could be causing a conflict, find out what kind of chip it is, and check the manufacturer's website for known conflicts. (with the m-audio)
 
Its an ATI RADEON 320M. I did update the driver but it still didn't help. I check the website for conflicts but I could not find anything. I'll keep looking.
 
I went through 3 firewire cards and two laptops before I found a combo that worked *OK* with my MutiMix.. It still has an issue or two, but I can record and playback... No idea what the FW card is other than the cheapest one I could find on Ebay.. Like $7.. The $65 TI Chipset one I got from Circuit City didn't ever recognize the MultiMix on the other end of the wire. Same with the intergrated NEC chipset that's built into the laptop...

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Rob
 
Thats odd. I've also bought 2 different Firewire cards. Both the $70 and the cheap noname from eBay don't work. It'd be a shame for me to have to return this great device. Hopefully it doesn't come down to that.
 
I have a HP zv6000 laptop running a Firepod without any problems and bumped into someone else with a somewhat similar configuration who was having the same firewire issues you seem to be having and the common denominator was the firewire card. He fixed his issue by using the on-board Firewire adapter instead of using his firewire adapter card. Seems there's some incompatibility or hang-up in running audio hardware through HP laptop's cardbus adapters. Have you tried going through the on-board 4pin firewire connector. I know it's just 4-pin but I adapated down (using an APC firewire cable purchase @ Wallyworld for less than $10.00) without any issues from my Firepod which has the bigger, 6 pin connector. That could be a basic "cheap-fix" you can try.
 
Not overly familiar with AMD stuff.. The Athelon isn't AMD's budget processor like the Celeron is for Intel is it..???

I've read the Presonus stuff isn't to much for running with the Celeron and have seen first hand that Alesis hates Celeron processors.. Maybe something similar...

If it comes down to it, you might be able to unload your laptop on Ebay and pick up a Pentium M from Dell.. They've been running some deep discounts.. The one I'm on now listed for over $2000 before Christmas, I ordered it a few days after and gave under $1300.. I priced it out again last week and it's another $100 off with a free DVD Burner... Saw a dual core 2ghz from them for right at $1500.. You can prolly go with one of the more budget units, beef up the processor and ram and come out under $1000..

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Rob
 
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