Hi,
I had the same problem. Had a 15" Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz. Fortunately I was able to try a couple of different Macbook Pro's - newer 17" unibody and slightly older 2009 models. Both of those worked flawlessly. Unfortunately I found the problem was with my Macbook. Although it worked with several other USB or Firewire audio interfaces.

Hi Timur, you are right,
I´ve tested my madiface on my 2011 MacbookPro8.3 bootcamp 4 . my app: sequoia 11.1.2. after 5 to 10 minutes the macbook freezes, i can eject the madiface and win 7 64 runs ok, or bluescreen error: hdsp64.sys, always the same.
I´ve tested your tipps-but there is no change of my situation.

Mixed news: You can insert the HDSPe EC when Windows is already running and it will even be detected properly without having Device Manager manually detect hardware changes.

Curious but interesting news: You can also insert the HDSPe EC after calling up the F8 Windows boot menu (I had it freeze the MBP once though). Then when you start Windows normally it will stall over 2 minutes after the CLASSPNP.DLL is loaded (just before the logon screen). But after that time runs up Windows goes on booting and everything seems to work properly fine. According to XPerf logs the CPU is mostly idle during this time.

I´ve posted this article in the hdspe topic.
joe austria

The 2008 MBP uses a different ExpressCard than the 2010, which uses a different chipset than the 2011. Furthermore the electrical design around the EC slot of all Macbooks is rather poor (I can make it dropouts *electrically* by connecting an external display or powered USB hub).

Last but not least, Apple doesn't care if the EC works in Windows or not. On your 2008 MBP you wouldn't even be able to use *any* EC (be it audio, FW or eSATA) with Windows Vista/7 and Apple support would tell you that it's "Microsoft's fault".

This may all sound dis-encouraging, but after more than 2.5 years of dealing with Apple over exactly these issues (and 3 generations of MBP being replaced under warranty) I gathered quite some experience on this.

I haved the same problem, with a similar mbp but with 8 gb ram. Maybe I've solved the problem, but I'm not sure exactly where the problem is.
This was my procedure:
Open the Console (in Utilityes), connect your Madiface in the pciexpress slot. Run first reaper and see what appears on the Console screen. There appears a lot of errors, and it depends from many QuickTime codecs that could be obsolete. In my setup I've found, and removed, this: 3DXQuickTime.component, LiveType.component, Sonix SN9C102p WebCam.component. They resides in root/Library/QuickTime.

This don't solve the problem immediately, and I get always a mbp freeze....so I restart and then I've run ProTools...first error was a try from ProTools to open a Rewire plug at 64 bit that resides inside the content folder of my Reaper 64 bit version...so I've deleted the Reaper 64 app. Then another bunch of errors occours in ProTools launching his firewire and usb audio and device drivers, like: DigidesignFireWireMIDI.plugin, DigidesignMbox2Midi.plugin, DigiDIOMidiDriver.plugin, M-Audio USB Support.plugin, and I've removed also the YamahaNuageMIDI.plugin. This resides in root/Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers. I've let in place only the HDSP MADI MIDI.plugin, PaeFireStudioMIDIDriver.plugin, Yamaha-USBMIDIDriver.plugin and the YamahaNetworkMIDI.plugin. Some other plugins could be found in the user/Library/Audio/Midi Drivers location.

At the end of this, after launching the ProTools app, I' spilled off the MAdiMIdi port in ProTools.

Now it seems that the Madiface is running correctly, in Console I' don't get any errrors. I've only to try a full recording with the Madiface connected to a Digico SD8 console in the next days. Now to try it out I've connected the Madi buss with a bnc from the in to the out connectors.

What I suppose, is that the MAdiface get a mbp crash due the Midi drivers mismatch, or maybe a midi loop. And maybe RME has to investigate, solve this problem and release a new firmware/driver update, also for us users of the 10.6.8 osx

Please give a try to my solution and let me know if it solve the freeze of your mbp. Remember, I have deleted only the Reaper 64 bit version, all other driver are to move to new folders outside the originals.

Best regards
Italo