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I recently bought an 896 to use as a converter for my home studio. After spending hundreds of dollars on good FireWire cables, downloading what seems to be the appropriate software (multiple versions of it) and fighting it in Windows and my DAW, the 896 does not work. All it does is freeze my DAW and crash my computer. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate and Sonar 8 PE. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

You did not mention if you are 32bit or 64bit or if you have installed the latest driver. My 828mkII works just fine in Windows 7 64 bit with Cubase or Reap er.

Not sure why you would need $100s in firewire cables. I've never had a problem with cheap ones. Firewire is a digital protocol and unless you have some sort of extreme interference (like you live under a microwave tower or your cables lie directly on top of many parallel AC cables) you should not have trouble with them.

Do a google search about Windows 7 and firewire issues, you will get lots of results.
There have been a lot of people that have had problems with that.
A lot of folks recommend that the fire wire connectors built into a motherboard be based on the Texas Instrument chip set, not all companies use the same chips sets.

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 and use this card plugged into a PCIe slot on the motherboard.
Model SY-PEX30016 PCIe fire wire 800.
FW 800 has different connectors then FW 400 so you would need matching FW 800 cables.

I have a 896mk3Hybrid and it works great with Pro Tools and Reeper.
So try and check which chipset your motherboard has built into it if you are using that. If your 896 does not use FW 800 then adjust accordingly.

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61428

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