If you have a laptop with inbuilt firewire port must you get a pcmcia/express card

[aabbey]

If you have a laptop with inbuilt firewire port must you get a pcmcia/express card. I have been having some difficulty getting my protools to work. I have another thread "Pro tools just wont start" and someone mentioned this. Any opinions or suggestions

[Premo]

In some cases yes.

Doesn't matter desktop or laptop, if the Firewire port isn't a Texas Instrument chipset then you could have trouble.

Digi qualified this model

FireWire/1394 Cards for Laptops
SIIG FireWire 2-Port ExpressCard

• Part Number: NN-EC2012-S1
• Qualified with specific configurations: Windows Laptops — Pro Tools LE 8.0 FireWire Systems

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...5&itemid=23113


You should also disable your wireless devices and your onboard video camera and follow the XP Optimizations sticky to turn off all background services and programs that might conflict.

If it's still not happy even with a supported 1394 card and the optimizations it could be an incompatibility with your built in graphics or Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset. That chipset isn't qualified by Digi and I haven't personally used it so I don't know for sure what to expect, maybe someone else with that chipset can comment.

[TOM@METRO]

Which of your threads on this issue world you like us to response on?

[rockerazo]

Everytime I open my PT files that were recorded from my external drive , even when I stop the PT tesk manager window that is searching the missing files (now that they are in my usb external drive) , they still sound scratchy distorted when I open them in my PT 7.4 ??? But when a create a new file no problem , no scratchy or distorted sounds come out!??, but when I tried to open a file that I already worked on a different computer, I keep getting a nasty distorted scartchy sound from these files ???

can anybody help me out pls!! am getting frustrated!!

[TOM@METRO]

USB external drives are not supported by Digi.

[Londoner]

Doesn't matter desktop or laptop, if the Firewire port isn't a Texas Instrument chipset then you could have trouble.

I know I'm in the wrong forum because I'm running PTLE on a Mac... but I came across this in a search and the headline is really scary. Does this chipset restriction apply to Macs too, and to LE?

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by Londoner

I know I'm in the wrong forum because I'm running PTLE on a Mac... but I came across this in a search and the headline is really scary. Does this chipset restriction apply to Macs too, and to LE?

No, it doesn't - the chipsets used in Macs are all supported. PC's can have a number of different FW chipsets - we require a TI for proper performance so, if their computer doesn't have a built-in FW port with a TI chipset, they likely will have to purchase a card for their system to work properly.