That means Firewire audio interface is no longer suppport in the Laptop world?

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Hi,

I am using a 4 years old Acer i7 (slow i7) running with Win7 and hooking up with Orpheus (Interface). Love to upgrade my laptop and stuck with Win7 but couldn't find any i7 laptop with FW port. Does it mean no company in the Laptop world supports it anymore >? :cry: And if this is the case and I don't want to be a MAC guy, any suggestion >?

Regards!
Cowby

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In recent years, the has been a couple (and I mean, count on one hand) of models from Fujitsu and the occasional toughbook, but that's it and I'm not even sure if the is on this generation.

Thunderbolt 3 is becoming rather common however, and the first Thunderbolt 3 to TB2 converters are due any day now, which should allow us to hook up Firewire again, although admitted through 2 converters until someone releases a direct TB3 to FW solution.

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FW i s dead, even apple don't use the ports anymore, but in Mac you can use a a TB>FW adapter.

I would suggest to sell the interface for something USB or TB.
dedication to flying

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wow i thought i'd have a link for you with adk pro audio, but even their laptop line doesn't have FW anymore, and that's saying something.

It's such a shame apple killed firewire, i don't know why.. even now, FW800 is useful, as it's on it's own totally separate bus from everything else, and the protocol doesn't use any native CPU and sustains it's speeds at all times. The day i give up my imac with native FW 800 is the day it literally explodes beyond any repair.

To the OP, there is an expensive way to do it.. if you are happy to use mac, you can buy any mac thunderbolt notebook and get the thunderbolt display, which has a POWERED firewire 800 port on it.... i have to look into whether this works in bootcamp, cause if it does, that's your (albeit pricey) answer, if you are strictly wanting to use windows.

The thunderbolt adapter is not the same thing cause it doesn't provide the 45 watts of bus power which sucks for portable fw drives or interfaces, The only way to have proper bus powered FW with thunderbolt is to buy a thunderbolt dock that plugs into the ac power and has a fw800 port.

The most reliable interface i ever had to this day was the motu ultralite, on it's own firewire bus on the imac (or mac 2012 mac pro), with absoplutely the best click/pop performance at low latency that any other interface when using heavy projects (including rme's i tried and my current thunderbolt 2 apollos!) Firewire on mac at least is just damn reliable. Apple aren't updating the driver anymore but i can't see how that matters, cause it's perfect the way it is, and el capitan still supports firewire interfaces properly if the dev makes a driver (again, like the legendary MOTU do). I also had an original saffire pro DSP (no longer compatible with macs but works fine on windows), and it also had good performance.. every time for me firewire is consistent and usb is ok but not as solid. Thunderbolt is great on mac , moty again make the best driver IMO.. let's see how rme's new TB UFX+ fares.. i am sure it will be amazing as well. :)

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Is FW via a PCMCIA card out of the question? Or are those also disappearing from laptops?

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Even if you *do* find a PC laptop with a firewire port you have to ensure the controller is up to spec as well - Spent ages finding a laptop with a firwire port about 5 years ago and finally found a Sony Vaio i7 for about a grand (in UK pounds) to use with my Echo Audiofire. It wasn't until I actually got the laptop and spent ages trying to get it to properly connect to the audio interface before finding out that the Ricoh chipset that powered the firewire port is completely terrible. As a result I upgraded to a USB Focusrite 8i6 and said an unfond farewell to firewire.

According to the Echo website -
The following FireWIre chipsets have produced good results:

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS: TSB12LV26
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS: TSB43AB23
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS: PTSB41LV03 (THIS IS AN OLDER CHIPSET AND DOES NOT WORK WELL AT 192K WITH OUR AUDIOFIRE 12.)
AGERE: FW323-06
AGERE: FW323:05

We have had mixed results with the following FIreWire chipsets. Newer cards with these chipsets have produced better results:

VIA: VT6306
VIA: VT63061

We do not recommend:

RICOH CHIPSETS

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For PCI Firewire you want a TI chipset. For PCI-e you want the Agere (revision 7 or higher) as that's the only native PCI-e FW chipset.

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cowby wrote:Hi,

I am using a 4 years old Acer i7 (slow i7) running with Win7 and hooking up with Orpheus (Interface). Love to upgrade my laptop and stuck with Win7 but couldn't find any i7 laptop with FW port. Does it mean no company in the Laptop world supports it anymore >? :cry: And if this is the case and I don't want to be a MAC guy, any suggestion >?

Regards!
Cowby

It's difficult enough to get functioning in Win7, I have heard worse in Win10/Win8.
Click here to read more.

sprnva wrote:For PCI Firewire you want a TI chipset. For PCI-e you want the Agere (revision 7 or higher) as that's the only native PCI-e FW chipset.
Most TI PCI-e firewire interfaces work fine from my experiences, and I'm running MOTU , which is quite picky. PCI can cause problems nowadays for firewire, in a modern motherboard.

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