W3V and firewire port problem

Hello,
I have a asus W3V, everything was fine till friday.
I bought a firewire sound card interface, a Presonus firebox.
I experience a lot of problems with it when connected tomy laptop.
espescially major playback problems.
I went to all the forums (french ones) i knew could help, try all the tricks and settings recommended by users and Presonus sav, nothing change.
The system is not in cause.
Then someone told me he had prblem with another asus laptop (V6V) regarding the firewire port.
I phone Asus France this morning and the guy confirmed me that there might be a imcompatibility problem between the chipset of the firewire port of the laptop and some firewire sound interface...

I will go to the music shop tomorow to test other sound interfaces.

But, in the meantime,as I don't have any other devices to test with firewire port, I wanted to ask other W3V owner about their experience with firewire port.
Anyone using DV camera, external Hd, etc... with the w3v could you give your input?

Thanks in advance
Fred

Marseille, France

 

I don't have any problems using external firewire HDD and iPod to W3V, but soundcards tend to be more picky about which chip is used.

I use RME Hamerfall DSP pcmcia soundcard, and it works perfectly on W3, even at 1.5ms latency, when CPU usage is low.


I've noticed that W3 comes with generic firewire drivers provided by windows. Maybe you should try finding dedicated drivers fo the firewire chip that is used. I think it's from Ricoh but I'm ot sure of exact model. You should try contacting Asus support.

 

Here w3v (stock) + Samsung miniDV through firewire with standard drivers = OK.

Spain.

 

ive had no problems using the iPod with the w3v.

 

I had problems - with the v6v and then, as per someone elses advice here, turned on my bluetooth (which I had turned off)
Voila - problems went away.
These problems were with an old vst firewire drive and with a sony dv camera. Firewire drives with the oxford 911 chipset had no problem.

 

I had massive delayed write failures with an external hard drive enclosure when connected to firewire on my W3V.

The enclosure used a Prolific PL3507 chip, updated the firmware to that and it didn't solve anything, downloaded microsoft's fix, didn't solve it. I switched over to USB2.0 (the enclosure supports both USB and firewire) and it's been working fine since.

 

Hey, hope you didn't return that Firebox yet. I have the EXACT same setup. Asus W3V with a Presonus Firebox, and I had the same problems with the firewire. A stuttering, skipping loss of sync on playback. Here's the fix:
After hooking up the Firebox to the W3V, hibernate the computer then turn it back on. Voila! Sync is perfect.
The problem is related to the ACPI power management system, which I suppose you could disable if you wanted to be totally free of the problem. But you'd lose alot of the automatic power features. I totally stumbled upon this moments before I was about to drop-kick the Firebox out the door.

BTW- Love the Firebox. The mic pre's really are pristine, and the sound quality is sooo good on the outs, I hate it when I have to use the crappy 1/8" they put on the laptop. I'm considering getting a Echo Indigo DJ PCMCIA card just to have a decent quality headphone out when I'm going portable without the Firebox and want to listen to tunes. Anybody else have problems with the headphone jack on the W3V?
Now if they'd just put a full size firewire port on laptops, it'd be perfect. Using the external power supply for the Firebox is a bit of a pain.

 

I ahve an Averatec 3270 eh1 and us an iogear card for the fire wire ports. I bought a presonus firebox and cannot get the midi / audio to work with any software. any suggetions. I was using xp home and did a fresh install of xp pro reloaded drivers. The firebox works onmy desktop and so does other audio interfaces. The firebox plays the midi dead slow but only after you stop the sequence. No one even iogear, averatec o presonus have a solution. All say its the other. ANy ideas to try.

 

Got the same problem as you drescribed!!!! Have to recover my HD 3 times...Now my firewire port will be disable and never use it with a external hard drive!!!! Been using USB 2.0 and have no problem up to date!

 

So far so good. I also have an external 2.5" HD enclosure that supports Firewire & USB 2.0... the firewire is fine for what I've used it with.

 

I have the same problem with both my m-audio firewire audiophile and echo indigo (pcmcia) audiocards. And it is very annoying. Anyone came up with a solution (except turning on the bluetooth, I don´t want to have it on draining batteries, and it doesn´t work perfect.. )

 

i called up asus uk with exactly this problem and they told me that firewire soundcards are not recommended for use with asus products....

the reason being that the firewire ports are not designed for a continuous throughput of information.

This statement is backed up by the resource sharing of the firewire port... on the m6v (which I had to return for precisely this problem) the firewire ports IRQ setting was being shared with the graphics card, onboard soundcard etc etc... all very hungry components which equals instability when interfaced with firewire soundcards...

Things you could try... pcmcia firewire card....

Also you could look at this document , it talks about IRQ settings and laptops, but I found that it was not possible to change these settings through disabling components on the m6v...

 

Yesss

so how do you like doing music recording on your w3? If i get one that is what i will be using it for

Please let me know!

Thanks

 

Dear lord


Im glad I came into this thread..

 

Maan. I've been trying to reach asus for ages. And my retailer just don´t seem to want to speak to me.. I have similar problems with the pcmcia too (and firewire as told above). I think that this is a thing that should work, and that asus should've stated it on their webpage or something before you bought it..

 

JBhuffer-


"After hooking up the Firebox to the W3V, hibernate the computer then turn it back on. Voila! Sync is perfect. "

Does this have to be done each and every time you're going o use firebox?


I already have my mic and soundcard(Also happens to be the firebox) picked out for my recording. the only thing left was the laptop. Im starting to wonder if the w3 is good for this

 

Hi guys,
EXACTLY the same problem with my ASUS V6VA20-RPRO notebook i just bought.
I'm glad to see some users of ASUS notebooks that have the same problem i have with my M-AUDIO firewire solo soundcard.

I noticed that ACPI could be responsible of that problem when i turned it off. in that case the sound card works perfectly..
it seems the firewire chip (W3V and V6V) - Ricoh R5C841 - has an instable behaviour with ACPI - and causes communication over firewire to be instable too.

as firewire driver is a microsoft generic (released between 2000 and 2002 i think). does anybody know if alternative drivers exists ?
maybe we could ask Ricoh if they solved the problem ? how they did it ? do they provide a driver for consummers ?

my ASUS V6V is a nice notebook, but i 'm disappointed and all of you too..
how many people have this problem with asus notebooks ??

thanks for your answers and ideas.