E1505 (love it) - how to get digital / analog line in?

I've had my e1505 for two months and thanks to SouthernGirl have it running quickly and coolly with no bloatware. Dell upgraded me behind the scenes to a 256 MB ATI x1300 from a 128 MB, which is fine for my needs (Dark Age of Camelot, Price of Persia games, Heroes III-V of Might and Magic, Diablo, emulators, yes, I'm stuck in a time warp). Since I use it outside I went with a regular WXGA 800x600, and it's plenty bright and sharp once I adjusted ATI settings. I highly recommend I8kfanGUI for just the sheer fun of being able to view and understand everything going on in your system (the whole reason for getting a PC).

I do a lot of sound editing on my old Dell desktop but want to pack it up and use "lappy" (thanks, Strong Bad) exclusively now. Unfortunately, there is no line in since there is no sound card. I have a Tascam DAT recorder and all sorts of cables, but nothing digital or analog out to USB, so I can't download the .wavs to my HD. Has anyone had any luck installing an internal sound card on an e1505, or using a USB sound card / converter to get line in from other sound devices? What methods, cables, cards, or adapters do you recommend?

Many thanks

 

actually you didnt get upgraded to 256, its the same 64 meg card, the drivers now enable 192 megs of hyper mem(system ram), there are no express cards yet for upgraded sound, so usb would be your only option that I know of

 

Well actually get a PMCI card maybe if they exiest but why cant u just threw it in threw your mic and just have a program record it if u just do a lot of sound editing. Under to do that with my old old old toshiba laptop (well 1.6 celeron, 512 RAM, 40 GIG HD, and a 16MB Nvidia Geforce 4 Grafics and i think an old 14 inch screen, lol

 

That notebook probably only has an Express card slot, so going for a PCMCIA is not really an option...

 

Since Rukh got a driver upgrade from 128 to 256 in a X1300, can I get a 256 to a 512 upgrade on a ATI X1400?

 

mbush, you arnt going to be running anything with settings that would require 512 megs. ^^

 

I don't think its even possible. To have 512MB's shared for the X1400.

 

lol ya that would be nice
bc i play FEAR!

 

I dunno.. it might. The "upgrade" is actually just upgrading to the latest ati drivers (I used the omega ones, since you dont need to edit them to get them to work on the laptop cards). Apparently they found that they could up the shared memory counterpart to 192 with no performance difference (and it seems to be dynamic. I havnt seen any manual control on how much memory to use for hypermemory). Even then though, its a bit overkill. The generation of games that run well on a x1300 dont need much more then 128.

Mikk, but the x1400 cant run at settings that would require 512megs for a game like fear. ^^ adding memory to a video card dosnt make it faster. Having more memory on a video card helps it handel games when it is under "full load". An x1400 under full load is still pretty weak, your still going to have to lower detail settings..so having more then 256 dosnt help much.

 

Since this thread got hijacked onto video issues, I'm making a bump in the hopes someone can assist with sound. Can I send digital input through the mic? Are there Express slot sound cards? Has anyone used a USB sound card emulator with line-in with success on an e1505? Many thanks!

 

try the usb audigy sound blaster

 

actually its a bios update for the video, and it doesnt really increase performance at all, even if you had 1gig of dedicated vram on your x1400, you wouldnt see any real improvement over the 128 dedicated,and 128 hyper memory you have now on games,your gpu isnt powerful enough to take advantage of it, the x1300 only has 64 meg dedicated, bumping up the system ram usage can have a positive impact on running areoglass on vista, but thats about it,

for the sound issue, you cant use pcmia cards on an e1505, so thats out, there are no express cards for sound at the moment as I stated earlier, as for using the mic I dont really know, you should ask dell, your other option would be usb, I have no experience with those, but I've heard there can be a lag going that route, if you try one,get it from a place with a good return policy, you should also try looking around for other forums that are geared towards digital editing/recording, thats all the advice can give you, good luck