OT:Toshiba Laptop Express Card

[Steve L]

Church customer brought in a Toshiba LT with no Firewire for the Profire 2626 I sold him. He bought SAWStudio Basic to record 8 tracks of the service.
Had to get a Startech Express card Firewire adapter for the LT. (TI chipset)
Does not work...drivers load fine. Unit works on my Lenovo with on board firewire perfectly. Drivers show up in SAW but no audio in or out on the Toshiba. Audio shows on the Profire console and passes through the unit but just no interaction in or out of SAW.....I've seen this before and it was a Toshiba problem. Any thoughts. I have used the card bus adapter for firewire from Startech on other laptops with no problem. This one is stumping me.

Steve Lewis
Audio-Video Electronics
Mountain View Recording
859-623-4406

[IraSeigel]

Steve,
Sorry to butt into your thread, but I'd like to know what Startech card you're using. There are several to choose from on their webpage.

I need a spare for my Lacie card.

Ira

[Steve L]

EC13942 is the model
2 port Firewire ExpressCard
I have used their 3port CardBus adapter on other laptops with no problem.
This one is flaky...It shows up fine in controlpanel, the PF2626 is listed, everything should work but it doesn't. The card works with a firewire hard drive I have.
Steve L.
Mountain View Recording

[Bob L]

So... does SAW list the devices properly (ASIO Mode) and does it playback and display meters as if everything is ok?

Bob L

[Steve L]

SAW lists the ASIO drivers fine, but no playback of even prerecorded files and no record. When starting SAW in playback it goes to a forced engine shutdown to stop. It doesn't matter however because the customer is taking the Toshiba back and getting another laptop with firewire on board (hopefully a TI chipset).
Thanks for the input.
Steve L.
Audio-Video Electronics
Mountain View Recording

[Steve L]

Customer purchased an HP laptop with an ExpressCard slot. Loaded drivers,
etc. SSBasic and everything worked. Some Vista tweaks and recorded 8 tracks, dumped in a previous 16 track project ....play back and record working fine. Go figure on the Toshiba. Only one minor glitch if I scroll the multitrack very fast with a USB mouse I get a buffer underrun message, doesn't crash SAW or anything but I suspect the video settings.

Thanks for the input
Steve L.
Audio-Video Electronics
Mountain View Recording

[amanke]

I purchase several Toshiba laptops for missionary recording studios and using Echo Audio Firewire units and ran into the exact same problem on the express card firewire laptops. On the older Toshibas using cardbus firewire, the Echo Audio units worked great but on the units using express cards I have spent many hours trying to solve the problem. I purchased different brand firewire cards and that didn't solve the problem. I purchase extra Echo Audio units and they didn't work. I purchase M-Audio firewire and that gave same results. I have purchase Lenovo laptop units using the same express cards that didn't work with the Toshibas and they worked perfect with the Lenovo. I even put winxp on 2 of the laptops and that didn't solve problem. I did get one Toshiba working by doing a mess of things but it only works under certain conditions. I wish Toshiba would address this problem but talking with a level 3 tech, they acted like I was the only one with this problem but this has been documented by scores of firewire users and not just audio firewire.

Toshiba did have a similar problem that they addressed and they found the problem to be their wireless lan that affected the audio so maybe its an interrupt problem.