motu ultralite and Firewire ExpressCards

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:47 pm

Is anyone using a Motu Ultralite or even one of the other Motu Firewire interfaces with a Firewire ExpressCard on a PC XP notebook.

I came across this firewire ExpressCard...
http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=1&pid=1081

And just emailed them to ask which chipset it contains...
based on this
http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technot ... %20chipset

From the motu site which I came across here with people having issues with motu and firewire.

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:58 pm

MOTU Ultralite doesn't work very well (if at all) if the FW chipset is not TI. I installed a SIIG PCI FW card in my desktop, and Ultralite worked great.

I love my Ultralite.

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:27 pm

Cool...I need to contact SIIG and verify that their notebook Firewire ExpressCard is TI.

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 5:49 pm

I received this response from SIIG...

"It's Texas Instrument."

In response to my question....

"I just need to know what chipset your FireWire 800 1-Port ExpressCard/34
uses or is based on?"

Regarding the following notebook firewire ExpressCard.

http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=1&pid=1081

Therefore it should be supported by Motu Firewire interfaces. I will probably find out next month when I actually purchase both.

machead · Post by **machead** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:17 pm

the pic looks like a firewire 800 connection you need firewire 400 for the motu

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:25 pm

A 400 to 800 cable should take care of that though right. Because currently there are very little firewire notebook expresscards on the market. Only one I have found with Texas Instruments chipset so far.

The expresscard product info does state...
"Supports serial bus data transfer rates of 100, 200, 400, 800Mbps"
and
"Compliant with IEEE 1394b & backward compatible with 1394a-2000 and 1394-1995 standards"

and here...
http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technot ... -interface
it states....
"Also, you can use a FireWire 800-to-400 adapter to plug a MOTU FireWire interface into a computer with a FireWire 800 port. As our FireWire interfaces are FW 400 devices, there will be no performance increase by connecting them to a FW 800 bus, but there will also be no detriment to MOTU FW performance either. Using a FW 800-to-400 adapter simply provides you with more connectivity options."

Soarer · Post by **Soarer** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:29 pm

Ti Chipset is no guarantee that it will work. My old PC (XP) had this and also my new PC laptop(Vista). Still I could not make the Ultralite work properly. Tried a RME FF400 with Firewire Express cards: Belkin and ST Lab and no difference of what so ever.

But my audio interface karma has been extremely bad recently so it may just be me...