Audio drop outs with Focusrite Saffire 14 and white MacBook

[Ryanmf]

UPDATE:

Booted into single user mode, turns out my old ass laptop has a Lucent firewire chipset, which is likely the source of the problem. I just tested the interface on my roommate's no-longer-in-use iMac and got over an hour of continuous audio playback with no issues. Problem solved (or at least it will be when I buy a new computer).




First: thanks for reading, and for any help anyone's able to provide.

I bought a firewire audio interface (Focusrite Saffire Pro 14) and have been getting consistent audio drop outs. The LED indicating a Firewire connection always stays lit on the HW unit, and it always appears as an available device in system preferences, but after a while the audio just drops out, and my only options are to hot unplug/plug the interface (which Focusrite recommends against) or to restart.

In digging for a solution, I found a sticking point. There's an Apple driver/extension called AppleFWAudio.kext that does appear in ~/System/Library/Extensions but does not appear in System Profiler>Extensions. When I found this, I booted to my Snow Leopard disk, repaired disk permissions, and reinstalled the OS (over top of what was already there, no Archive/Erase & Install this time), and reapplied the 10.6.8 combo update. No improvement. I just did an erase & install (basically started my system over from scratch) ~8 months ago, I'd be surprised if I already developed system-crippling software problems in that time, though stranger things have happened.

Here's my request: Can some of you who are running Snow Leopard open up System Profiler (Apple Logo>About This Mac>More Info), click the Extensions tab on the left, and confirm that AppleFWAudio shows up on your list of installed extensions? My assumption is that it should be there, and that there's a software issue specific to my machine that's preventing it from running/being recognized, leading to the audio drop outs. If it doesn't show up on your list of extensions (in particular if several of you report the same), then for some reason it just doesn't show up there on Snow Leopard like it did in Leopard, and my search for solutions will narrow to the Firewire chipset in my laptop or the interface itself.

Extra points if for some reason you, like me, are still using a white Macbook.

Thanks again.

[doghouse]

I'm on a MacBook Pro using a Saffire Pro 40, OS 10.6.8.

No Apple FW Audio extension found.

I do see the .kext file you mentioned.

You have all the latest Focusrite drivers installed?

[Ryanmf]

Thanks for the assist, looks like the shitty firewire chipset in my ooooooold white Macbook is the culprit.