Texas Instruments Firewire and Cardbus Chipset

Does anyone know how to find out if the Firewire and cardbus chipsets in a laptop are made by Texas Instruments? I am into Audio recording and have read that these chipsets are the best for what I do... so much so that going with a laptop that does not have these chipsets is apparently a huge gamble. I can't seem to find this detailed info anywhere (about "name brand" or "barebones")... anyone have any ideas?

 

You can check device manger and it will tell you who make you firewire controler

under 1394 controlers

cardbus shound be listed they under pcmai controler card or diffent titely am not look at my laptop at moment hope that is some help you


that only way can think of unless specs for spefic laptop listed it

if you talk with out see or useing laptop they specs are only way most do not listed what controlers they use

 

Yeah, I'm talking about without being able to have the laptop "hands on".... I was thinking about getting a "barebones" and don't have the resources buy a bunch and test them out.

Is there any kind of list or something?

 

I went through this a few months back for the same reason. I use a MOTU 828MKII firewire box for my audio. It is probably the most finicky firewire interface made! I spent at least a month looking up the different laptop builders websites. Emailing them etc. Most of them gave me back bunk info.
check out a thread on the Cakewalk Sonar forums I started earlier this year.

Basically the Sonys, Gateways and some Toshibas have TI chips. I settled for a cheap Lenovo with a Ricoh 1394 chip. But it works so far!
You might want to do like I did and head down to some suburb sprawlmart and investigate the different models at BestBuy, compusa, Circuit City etc.
Though I ended up going with a newegg deal, I found the only way to get info on the 1394 chips is in person.

ps about cardbus 1394: I have heard on some forums that even with a TI chipset some cardbus, expresscard and pcmcia adapters are not 100%.

 

Thanks! Very informative....

The more I think about it the more I am leaning towards Mac....

Do you know about any Audio related problems with Mac?

 

the only audio related problems with a Mac are that it does not natively run Sonar and a couple other apps. Some of the best stuff made is mac only though(Like the Apogee Ensemble, Logic, Performer). If I could afford to spend $2k at once on a computer I would so be on a Mac. Well that and I am totally a huge Sonar fanboy, so that keeps me on Windows.

 

Yes, I though a mac was going to be all the solutions to my potential audio problems and then they changed their firewire chipset from TI to Agere. The latest macbook and macbook pro seem to be causing audio problems with these Agere chipsets...damn it! My current sony has one so I may keep it afterall