Firewire issue affecting all the Dell Core Duo notebooks

Did you mention that the new Inspirons cannot use any PCMCIA cards, only the new Express Cards?

So, how did MOTU determine this? I have only read about 5 Express Cards, none are firewire or audio cards, but still looking.

 

http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/cons_wtb.jsp#1394

Also, there is a post earlier in this thread from someone who tried an ExpressCard firewire card with a CoreDuo machine and there was still a problem.

 

hay
Because I know there are compatibilty problems
with laptops and soundcards I didn't buy a laptop yet
to use with firepod

but... this might interest you

I found a forum where a guy gets many dropouts
He didn't think it was in connection to the soundcard
and maybe he was right because he solved
the problem by using an external hardrive to record to
now you didn't say if you were using one or not
so you should try this . it might be a solution
btw ... he was using a dell

take a look at the forum
http://www.audiomastersforum.net/amforum/viewtopic.php?t=5505&sid=d160c6586c8c316399e419ccb754a486

 

The is not a hard drive related issue. It even happens with RAM based VSTi's (eg. NI B4II).

Thanks for sharing though.

 

Well, Hydra. It seems that the problem is affecting Intel Macs too.

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Board=MacMus&Number=367282

 

Maybe PCI Latency Tool can fix this problem.
Try to change firewire host controller latency.

 

Thanks for the link SYNC, things are looking better

Sam, in your link the poster also said "BTw, just so everyone knows, my system works flawlessly in OSX. Any other suggestions to fix this niggling little thing." He was using a windows driver "boot camp" so there may be a problem with windows drivers or apple windows drivers?

 

Sam, I re-read your first post. I missed the Express card, however I do use firewire drives. My Acom firewire drive has been no problem but my cheapo firewire fails for what this is worth. I'll try out my Sony DVR when I get it back from loan.

I also question why Dell (now!) blames this on the 945 chipset..let the customer be the beta tester?

 

I have a western digital drive that works perfectly with my laptop, but I'm curious to see how it works with a DVR. The dell agent told me that his DVR didn't work.

It's obvious that Dell didn't know of this issue when they released their Core Duo notebooks, and they didn't blame intel. The guy just told me that it seems to be 945's fault and the case has been escalated to intel.

But why intel or dell didn't find the problem before us? Because of inadequate testing and wanting to be the first to sell Core Duo notebooks. Business stuff, you know! They probably just tested a firewire HDD and thought everything is working.

 

Hi all!

I have also painfully discovered that my inspiron 6400, bought to use as a DAW, doesn't work with my Presonus sound cards.

If it's the FireWire chipset that's the problem, will adding a FireWire expresscard solve the issue?
I have read that the SIIG ain't the solution of this problem.

But what about these two:
http://www.xterasys.com/e94a.htm
http://www.superwarehouse.com/Belkin_FireWire_Express_Card/F5U505/p/1483814

Has anyone tried them? Any success?

Selling my Dell is such a waste of money since the value has dropped significally during the month that I've owned it. So if investing in an expresscard is the solution, it will be worth the cost.


Regards
MrYatzy

 

I got this from MOTU support:
-----------------------------
Question: Did you mean PCMCIA or the new version- ExpressCard? Have both been tested?

Answer: You can use a PCMCIA adapter card or an Express adapter card. As long as the card uses a TI or Lucent chip, it will work.

 

Well, tell him that we tried an Expresscard with the TI chipset and it didn't work. They obviously don't know about the issue yet.

 

What expresscard was that?
SIIG, Belkin or Abocom?
Or other?

---------------------------
MrYatzy

 

Read my first post in this thread, SIIG.

 

I think they all know the issue and they just keep quiet about it and seem like ''wow...weve never seen that before...it must be one of your settings...wrong''!!!
otherwise if the would admit it...that they don't have a solution for it, they would loose a lot of business!!! THEY SHOULD START PRINITING ON THE BOX...HAS CRACKS AND POPS IF USED WITH CORE DUO LAPTOPS (EVEN TI CHIPSETS FW)!!! Now that wouldn't be too professional about them would it?! If i think better they should start saying that because it's already become a very spread problem!...VERY CHEEKY AND UNPROFESSIONAL...

 

Wow, I wish I would have found this thread sooner. I spent a few hours and about $80 trying to fix this problem. I talked with M-Audio tech support about it and the guy was surprised I was even able to install my Firewire 410 on my Dell Inspiron e1505. He did suggest that it may work with another firewire port, so I bought the SIIG and even paid for overnight shipping, but of course, it didn't work. It actually performed a little worse. At one point I wasn't able to boot at all with it in the laptop, but it did eventually boot but didn't solve my issue. I originally thought it was a software issue. It would mess up/not work in FL Studio within a minute, if I was lucky, but I was able to get it working for much longer in Ableton Live Lite. Whatever the root cause of this is, I really hope they fix it soon. I bought my Firewire 410 before I bought my laptop because it could be mobile, and when I got my laptop, I was like, Yes! I finally have a mobile mini-studio, but ummm... didn't exactly work out that way Any word about that BIOS update? It's still planned for November, right?

 

Welcome to the thread! I haven't heard anything new regarding the BIOS update. So I assume that it's still planned for November, don't hold your breath though.

 

I Just Got A Bios Update For Dell Inspiron 6400/e1505, Version A09, I Don't Know If It's Just Me But I Think It Fixed The Problem A Bit, Now I Get The Cracks And Pops Not So Often...almost Can't Notice Them! The Weird Thing Is That It's Betten Only With The Firebox Drivers, It Happens A Lot More With Asio4 All, And Olso Cpu Load In Cubase Is Higher With Asio4all! So Many Versions Of The Issue...so Many Behaviours...
Hope The Bios Update In November Would Solve This Once And For All!

 

did anyone find out anything about EDIROL UA-101...USB2 interface that has same specs as M-audio FIREWIRE 410, presonus firebox...etc...?

 

oooo...and another thing that really pi**es me off about the sound card manufacturers! if they know about the problem...like when CUE8CHALK talked to m-audio support they were even surprised that he could start it up on his laptop, why don't they warn people about this issue?! i still think it's already a thing that they should have printed on the box...core duo is on the market since almost march 2006...and it's kind of a mass problem! any ideas as how we could get this out to any organisations that could impose something to the manufacturers...!! i'm thinking if they take us laptop users as a minority and don't push stuff to get it fixed sooner we might get it fixed when a new chipset is out and gets fixed by itself...

 

Ive got a LG S1 Express notebook and i am trying to use it with a MOTU Ultralite.. Every 10mins the ultralite goes crazy and sends static on all the channels.

Dont sure if it is related, I have tried both onboard firewire and a belkin PCMCIA firewire card and endless fixes...

I noticed that my laptop shares IRQ16 with the ATI X1600, pcmcia, firewire & pci chipset.

When i uninstall the ATI drivers and run in default windows crappy res the sound card seems to work fine, which makes me believe its a IRQ sharing problem..

There is no option for me to change IRQs tho

Do you ppl with dell notebooks have the same IRQ conflicts as me?

 

I'm not sure about your case, but it's not an IRQ issue in Dells.

It happens every 10 minutes of doing what? Playing mp3s or recording or playing VSTi?

In my case playing mp3 is fine, but the sound card controllers stop responding in less than five minutes, and playing VSTi and recording is almost impossible. If you don't have problems with recording try disbaling some power saving options.

 

yeah, using cubase or wavlab while playing with VSTs.

Only a problem when using ASIO drivers. It seems to work fine until the static starts and the LED on the ultralite go crazy on all the channels, have played around alot with sample rates and buffer.

It seems to be a semi common problem from reading forums, but the pcmcia card i bought was meant to fix it according to all the posts... Didnt help me

Havent tried too many power management settings, all i have done is set it to Always On. Didnt change at all...

 

Ok some things for everyone to try when it comes to laptop recording and firewire audio devices.

It took me months to get my Onyx 1640 to record 16 tracks of 24/96 cleanly to my laptop and here is what I had to do.

Most importantly, you need a dedicated audio hard drive. You might get 1 or 2 tracks down to the internal drive but anything above that you'll get random pops and clicks. You might get more tracks with a 7200 rpm internal.


If your firewire controller isn't a TI, you'll need an external card, there is no other way around it. But as soon as you put in an external card chances are you are going to have an IRQ sharing conflict with some other device. And you will not get clean audio until you get the card on it's own IRQ.

With my current laptop (915 based chipset) I do the following before every recording session. And if I don't she's click and popville constantly.

Disable on board audio
Disable Wireless
Disable Ethernet
Disable Modem
Disable all 1394 Network Adapters
Disable Com ports if you have them
Disable Parallel ports if you have them
Disable Flash and other memory card controllers

Actually most of above are left disable all the time, I don't use them. The key is to free up as much system resources as possible so the firewire controllers are running clean as possible.

The worst culperates are internal sound card and networking. Sequential repetitive blipps are most likely caused by an network device. XP is repetitively check time servers and other stuff via network that will conflict with a clean audio signal especially if the device is sharing the same IRQ as your firewire controller.

I have an XPS M1710 on the way so I'll dig into this whole 945 chipset problem that everyone is experiencing.


Jeff

 

Sorry, I had read it before, just forgot it...

I tried a Sunix 1394a Express Card (ECF2400) today.
It has the TI chipset but didn't work either.

My computer:
Dell Inspiron 6400
Dual core [email protected]
1GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400

The store was really nice, letting me special order the card, try it and return it if it didn't work. Great customer support!

List of Firewire Express Cards that dosn't work:
SIIG (NN-EC2012-S1)
Sunix (ECF2400)

Please add cards after you've tried it


Is it really a firewire chipset issue?
Could it be the CPU or the video card?

Any records of an intel dual core laptop that works with Firewire sound cards?
And any records of an X1400 equipped laptop that works with Firewire sound cards?

-----------------------------------
MrYatzy
-----------------------------------

 

Hey all. this is pretty grim. Is this happening to other laptop manufacturers generally? Anybody have any solutions short of buying a new Mac laptop?

 

Well, I thought I would join this elite club. I also have a Inspiron 6400 with firewire issues. I just returned my Presonus Firebox and am stuck using my Maudio USB Ozone for now. Same issues as everyone.. done all the tweaks, fixes.. etc... sigh... Firebox worked great on my desktop.

I am trying to decide whether to go through the pain for returning my laptop, but it sounds like this is not just a Dell issue. Lets all stay in touch on this thread. If anyone has any news please share so we can all benefit!

 

So what happens with the express card firewire cards? Clicking and Popping? Static? What?

 

Doesn't work at all!

 

Hi Everyone for what its worth, i have m-audio firewire audiophile and a dell precision M65 dual core laptop and i have everything working perfectly, finally.

I bought a cheap Belkin PCMCIA 3 port 6pin firewire card and now everything works perfect. It has the TI chipset which the m-audio drivers like. It won't power the audiophile and sticks out the side (ugly) but hey, at least i can get back to writing tunes.

 

M65 supports both PCMCIA and Expresscard?

 

Yep, it has both ec and pcmia card, i would be surprised if the M90 didn't support one as they are fairly similar machines . I forgot to add that I have disabled the internal LAN and the internal OCHI ieee port with nothing in the ec slot. I must also add i found this work around in the digidesign/avid forums where other people have had the same issue.

 

Yep, it was the solution until Dell dropped PCMCIA, and added an Expresscard slot instead. I guess you don't have an expresscard, but if you could test your sound card with an expresscard as well, the result would be really helpful.

 

Juno, is your M65 based on the 915 chipset? My 915 chipset works just fine as well, but I also have TI on board.

From what I can see here the problem is really that the expresscard slot isn't working on the laptops. Someone needs to report it to Dell.

Dell can do whatever to the bios but the internal non TI firewire port will never work properly with any serious audio interface. The only hope is the expresscard issues get worked out.

Has anyone tried a expresscard to cardbus adapter? I assume there is such a beast.

 

This is all very enlightening, thanks so much! Does anyone know if this is affecting other manufacturers besides Dell? I heard the same thing happens with a Mac pro running under Windows but not OSX.

 

The M65 which i purchased 2 months ago has the 945 chipset and a pcimca card slot from dell australia. And Sam i assume you know the M90 is certifed to work with m-audio hardware and software by both dell and m-audio (on their website) so i think you are well within your rights to demand a full refund. Also i don't have access to an express card firewire card to test.

 

That's nice, I didn't know that M65 supports PCMCIA. I have a PCMCIA card with the TI chipset but M90 doesn't have a slot for that!

Yeah, I could return my laptop, but decided not to. Instead as a compensation package I got a processor upgrade to T7600 (from T2600), a laser printer (1710), and am in the process of getting some spare parts for the LCD (the hinges are already getting loose)

 

I was seriously looking at the M90 after i had a disaster of an experience with a new toshiba satellite A100, i am glad i didn't buy it. For anyone out there thinking of getting a new dual core toshiba for DAW stay well away, they have the bad old problem of when the cpu fan kicks in and out (very often) the audio drops out. Completely useless. But funnily enough the internal TI firewire did work fine and it did have the 945 chipset....

 

There's no reason for the internal TI firewire not to work. I don't think there's a problem with the 945 chipset. The problem with dell is they aren't using the TI chipset.

Add the expresscard problems and it leaves firewire useless on the machines.


Can someone tell me what's happening with the express cards? I've heard not booting which sounds like a bios problem. I've heard cutting and dropping out which could be an IRQ sharing problem.

 

I agree. Dell uses a really crappy internal firewire card that is causing all the problems, my TI pcmica card works perfectly no hassles what so ever booting etc. I even pull mine out when i am not using it and plug in later with no dramas.
Dell really needs to replace the express card/firewire or come up with a fix because it is quite clear its Dell's fault not m-audio's etc. Other laptop brands with this issue probably just use crappy firewire cards as well.

 

Could you post the links please?

 

you can find it at:

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/ap/topics/solutions/en/wsadvisor?c=au&l=en&s=bsd

 

I got a latitude 820 a few days ago with core 2 duo. I've connected a camcorder and external HD to the firewire port with no troubles.

 

I have a E1705 and received my firebox wednesday...so far it has been hell trying to get my laptop to recognize the device....it only worked like 2 times! Do you have any suggestions?

 

That is not an indicator of whether it will work with a firewire audio interface.

 

It won't work the firewire chipset on your laptop isn't the TI chipset. Your only hope is someone figures out how to get the expresscards to work properly in the machines.

I'm hoping the Expresscard to PCMCIA adapter coming out shortly will do the trick, because I have a great Lacie PCMCIA Firewire 800 card I want to use.


Jeff

 

Hi Sam,

I'm in Canada also, using an Inspiron 9400 with a Focusrite SaffireLE, I want to use it in Nuendo 3 me too, for both recording audio and using VSTi...

Of course I have the same problem as you guys, clicks and pops, even in winamp...

I am joining this thread and be an active member, I really would like this issue to find _any_ solution. I've been an analyst programmer for 5 years before starting my design studio, I have some technical knowledge (not as low level as driver programming tho) so if I can be any use please tell me...

I want to be have a portable mini-studio and the Focusrite Saffire has really great features, pre-amps quality is stunning and the converter delivers a high quality sound with virtually no noise... I don't want to use another USB card, I want this firewire one...

I called Dell tonight, tried to explain the problem to the unqualified technician, and finally sent him to read the first post of this thread. He hasnt helped me at all with anything, conclusion was "we could replace your motherboard, that's all we can do". I would like to put some pressure on them now so they investigate more into this problem... What can I do ? Could I call them and mention your case number?

Sorry for the giant post

Styves
Studio Go

I would like to add that I can record audio tracks in Nuendo, I used for about 4 hours...the only problem I get is clicks and pops in sound (not only on the output but those clicks and pops are recorded as well to my tracks...). It seems that you were not able to use Nuendo at all, it's weird that we don't all have the same problems ?!

 

New Dell BIOS A04 for Inspiron 9400/E1705 is out.

System: Dell XPS M1210
Version: A04
Build Date: 09/29/2006

Intel 945GM Graphics Video BIOS version 1264
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 Video BIOS version 05.72.22.21.FD

Enhancements
------------
1. Updated Support for Microsoft Vista.

2. Updated Support for Intel Processor T5200.

3. Improved High Definition Audio Device performance.

I haven't tested it yet, and I don't know if #3 is about addressing the particular issue we've been experiencing. I guess we'll find out.

 

Hi there,

On the Dell site I saw there is a recent (10-22-2006) BIOS update for the 640m/e1405 inspiron laptop (don't know if it applies to other models as well).

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=1&vercnt=4&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=181391

It doesnt state any fixes regarding ExpressCard issues, so this probably isn't the BIOS update everybody is waiting for? I haven't bought a DAW or ExpressCard yet, but I would really like to know if the problem is fixed already. Any people in here with a 640m/e1405 Inspiron laptop (Duo Core T2400) who've got their Firebox or Saffire working with their laptop?

greetings,
Vbibber

 

I tried it yesterday (A04) and it does not fix the problem wirth my saffire plugged to the ineternal firewire port. I don't have a ExpressCard 1394 to test it.