Firewire compatibility?

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:36 am

I'm looking at a 828Mk2 or an Ultralite...

I read this on the MOTU site:

Any PC equipped with a Texas Instrument or Lucent based FireWire card should be compatible with our FireWire line.

The machine I want to run this on has a MSI K8N Neo2 Athlon motherboard with a Firewire chipset of VIA 6306 (400Mb). How can I tell if there will be problems? I can't seem to find details on this....

I will want to run this with Sonar 5+, Reason 3+, maybe CoolEdit.

strungdown · Post by **strungdown** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:30 pm

Should be fine.

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:59 pm

"Should be fine?"

What about all the people screaming about problems in other messages? Is this Firewire chipset the same as the TI ones? Are you running that same setup?

I am trying to avoid any issues. I also sent this to MOTU tech support but I figure I might get faster, more detailed information here.

Thanks.

arth · Post by **arth** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:48 pm

For what it's worth, I run an Ultralite on a VIA VT6306 (Fire II) controller on a 64-bit AMD CPU, with no problems due to the firewire chipset.

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:54 pm

arth wrote:For what it's worth, I run an Ultralite on a VIA VT6306 (Fire II) controller on a 64-bit AMD CPU, with no problems due to the firewire chipset.

What motherboard are you using? Did it work out of the box for you?

strungdown · Post by **strungdown** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:40 pm

There were a couple bad FW chipsets from VIA that gave them a bad rap back a couple years

Nowadays they seem to have improved their chipsets

Here some infor from Echo http://echoaudio.com/Support/FAQ.php#3

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:58 pm

strungdown wrote:There were a couple bad FW chipsets from VIA that gave them a bad rap back a couple years

Nowadays they seem to have improved their chipsets

Here some infor from Echo http://echoaudio.com/Support/FAQ.php#3

On that article you cite, they specifically mention the 6306 chipset as being not recommended....

strungdown · Post by **strungdown** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:36 pm

mabu wrote:
strungdown wrote:There were a couple bad FW chipsets from VIA that gave them a bad rap back a couple years

Nowadays they seem to have improved their chipsets

Here some infor from Echo http://echoaudio.com/Support/FAQ.php#3
On that article you cite, they specifically mention the 6306 chipset as being not recommended....

Oh ok Yeah you have the old Nforce 4 board. Those things are riddled with bugs

augerinn · Post by **augerinn** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:03 pm

Oh ok Yeah you have the old Nforce 4 board. Those things are riddled with bugs

And we're supposed to have this im depth knowledge of Motherboards and the FW chipsets that are built in before we buy the MOTU product ?

Look, I'm just as much of a techie as the next guy, but this.......

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:16 pm

.... just wondering if anyone knew whether or not there would be problems.

As you can see from this simple query, this is an annoying, frustrating situation. MOTU doesn't really seem to have much detail on this either. I was hoping someone might have some experience with this very popular, very well known motherboard (even though it is a few years old).

strungdown · Post by **strungdown** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:14 am

I agree, MOTU could have better information about compatibility with different chipsets. However, Nvidia is pretty inexcusable, just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nforce4#Flaws

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:39 pm

Does anybody know if I install a PCI firewire card, this would solve any potential problems?

i.e.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... ci&x=0&y=0

If so, which ones are the most regarded for these types of applications?

bossent20 · Post by **bossent20** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:50 pm

Funny that you are reffering to Texas Instrument PCI cards

I am having a big problem right now

I posted a topic not too long ago but am still waiting for replies

If you check the forum index you will see my complaint about the Unknown hardware issue under the Found New Hardware wizard on PC platform.

This is happening on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows

I have all the drivers for my Motu 828 Mk3. I have a Supermicro X6DA3-G2 mobo with the Adaptec Fireconnect 4300 3-port Firewire card. Everything else I have (hard drives) reads fine when I connect to the card, but after installing the drivers for my MOTU, I restart my PC as instructed and when switching on the MOTU device, my PC hardware window pops up but then says Unknown device

It should say Motu 828

But either way, the instructions say that if the Unknown device message comes up in the found new hardware wizard, then all I need to do is go into my devices window under my computer settings and then select Unknown and click update driver

but it does not find any of the drivers I installed

Is it my mobo... or my TI card?

What could be the problem

I am so sick of everything going wrong for me when it comes to music system setups.

Everyone is working nicely on their music whilst I am still sitting here sorting out problems like this.

Anyone have any ideas on this please

Would greatly appreciate the help

Thanks

PS - You can post a reply on my topic if you wish

mabu · Post by **mabu** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:08 pm

I can relate. I don't understand if you sell hardware, why you can't support the hardware, or at least publish a compatibility list.