Firewire help

[Damien Verrett (Jonas)]

Ok, so I went and ordered a Firepod firewire interface. Little did i know my new laptop has no firewire port... I could've sworn it did but apparently not.

So after flipping out and releasing my rage, I realized I have an eSATA port. Is there any way I can buy an adapter that will allow me to plug the interface into this? I've found some hub things, but i'm not sure if they're exactly what I'm looking for. Everything I've found seems like it's more for storage than anything else.

Help? This is so frustrating.

[ken]

Oh man, the same thing happened to me. I even bought an expensive firewire expresscard but I could not get it to work. I ended up buying a different interface with USB 2.0 instead.

[Damien Verrett (Jonas)]

I think this is what I'll have to end up doing.

Holy crap I can't believe how much trouble I'm putting myself through. Haha.

[Märk]

*Always* make sure a computer or laptop has a 1394 interface before buying it!
However, I had an old laptop with no firewire, but bought a cardbus firewire card for it, and my Firepod worked fine through it. Does yours have an Expresscard or PCMCIA expansion slot? If it has PCMCIA, I have a spare card I could sell you cheap (no use for it now, I upgraded the laptop)

[Damien Verrett (Jonas)]

I don't think there's space available to add anything. I'd rather stick with the Firepod, but I think I'll just have to go the USB route.

[Damien Verrett (Jonas)]

I'm thinking about sending the Firepod back and getting this: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... 245002#new

Does anyone have experience with this interface?

[ken]

My old laptop (Dell P3 free from work) worked great with a cheap pcmia firewire card. I still have no idea why my newer more powerful Dell can't deal. Anyway, the Tascam 1641 was one of the units I considered. It has a ton of inputs for stupid cheap. I never tried it out though, so I kind of hope you get it and let us know how it is.

Ken

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Whereas on the Mac side, the older laptops (Wallstreet & older) + a pcmia firewire (or usb for that matter) card will never work. Something in the interfaces requires the firewire (or usb) stuff to be on the motherboard. Grrr.

3 fuckin' cheers for MF's 45 day return policy, heh.

[jast]

Just to clarify, eSATA and FireWire (IEEE 1394) have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. SATA is a mass storage bus; 1394 is a general communications bus like USB (1394 seems to be the cooler one, but tell that to all the people producing USB devices only).