Maybe I should put it more clearly:

I want to use Multiface I with my new laptop running Vista and which only has a ExpressCard slot. It does not have the old CardBus (PCMCIA) slot.

What I would like to know is:

do I absolutely have to buy the expensive RME HDSPe Express Card

or

can I use the Multiface with its original CardBus (PCMCIA) card if I bought for it a standard (inexpensive) CardBus to ExpressCard adapter.

In the forum http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1522 an owner of Multiface reports of having successfully connected Multiface I to his desktop PC using a standard PCMCIA to PCI adapter instead of using the much more expensive RME PCIe card.

Theoretically if a certain PCMCIA-to-PCI adapter does the trick, a certain CardBus-to-ExpressCard adapter could do it too.

Just wanted to know whether anybody tried this before and if yes with what result.

Regards

Just bumping this up after the weekend.  Anyone at all?  Maybe someone heard that a friend of a friend's cousin's brother-in-law tried this?

Thanks...

-glenn

Interesting.  I actually ended up finding a laptop with both an express card slot *and* a cardbus slot, so I didn't have to deal with it after all.  It also has usb2 and firewire, which is nice because of my firewire drives.  It's a Dell m6400, bought refurbished.  Still working on getting everything installed (what a pain due to vista64 and all my old licensed software!).  But on a quick initial test pass, it seems that the RME stuff is working.  Haven't gotten to the point where I can push it and check for latency and all though.

-glenn

The chipset issues have more to do with Firewire audio devices.(FireFace's).
For MultiFace use, if you have it working through whatever card (PCI, CardBus, Express34) the firewire bus on the laptop is just for the data stream to your hard drives.
There shouldn't be a problem with most chipsets straight for data use.

(response to two posts back... I now see the post about the firewire data stream, which makes sense)

Yes, well, I had already ordered it before I got wind of the TI vs. Ricoh chipset issues.  Sadly, similar (or exactly the same) issues were swirling around years and years ago when I bought my last laptop.  I was ticked off to say the least that in 7 or 8 years I was still having to deal with the same damn thing.

But it's too hard to find the right combo of features/price/availability otherwise so I went ahead and tried it out.  I'm running the DPC latency checker, and so far at least, things look okay.  I haven't gotten far enough to try streaming large amounts of audio data through the unit though.

And I did have to mess around a little with what I did or did not install in order to get a bunch of latency spikes to quiet down.  I believe it had to do with possibly the matrix manager drivers (used the newer ones from intel, not the ones on the dell site), or possibly that I had to not install some of the dell custom low-level stuff ("checkpoint"??  Something like that... sorry I'm not at that computer right now).  And I did the "optimize for background processes" thing, and have installed very little non-essential software so far.  I hold my breath every time I have to add another license daemon or ilok driver or etc though... it's stressful!

I did install from scratch a number of times just to test and get it right.

-glenn

Well, it's all about deciding where to trade off between money and service provided I guess.  But no matter what machine you get, once it's in your hands you'll have the stress of not screwing it up   If you were referring to me installing different matrix drivers (or similar kinds of things)... yeah... I guess there's no denying at least the possibility of having to do a lot of googling to get the machine to a usable state.  In the end, it wasn't much that I did (so far, and fingers crossed) but it took a fair bit of research to get there.

-glenn

slickslack:  Actually, I've read a couple reports saying that a cardbus FW adapter STILL has the problems. (as the cardbus chipset is the same as the FW chipset)
I think the reason this given cardbus chipset works is that cardbus has much more bandwidth.

See here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview … mp;start=0

I'm looking at the ADK 8500MV:
http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/view … cordid=111

Basically, ADK uses the TI chipsets only... (they also use quiet fans, etc... things that help for audio work)
...((my current laptop is SCREAMING loud))

Derail was my fault.

...slightly back on topic, I guess if the cardbus works fine with most laptops (if chipset is not an issue), then I might as well save 500$ and put that toward the expressbus card instead of the adapter.

Thanks for the correction and clearing that up, Scott.
I can't say I envy anyone trying to sort this stuff out.
I know this is OT and a more general question but do IEEE really have such a loose standard that FW can be so differently applied across so many manufacturers? ugh!

Oh I know why the manufacturers do what they do and I know how (in a non electronic engineer kind of way).
I just want to know how any governing body that presumes to manage standardizations (IEEE) can let so much variation leak into a standard.

I had forgotten I had posted to this a while back, implying that my cardbus slot worked.  In fact, it only appeared to work but would reliably hang in predictable (and unavoidable) situations.

However, I too was able to make my cardbus interface work by plugging it into a cardbus -> Express card adaptor.

In my case it was a "Serial Technologies PCMCIA Cardbus Host into ExpressCard/34 slot Converter Adapter".  I'm not seeing a model number anywhere though.

Just another data point.

-glenn

All I can say is the specific model of adapter I have (not the one you linked to, but it looks similar) does in fact work in my specific model of laptop (M6400) by my specific manufacturer (Dell), with my specific OS (windows 7).  But yes, I was able to update the firmware through it, and the latency doesn't seem to be an issue as far as I can tell.

-glenn

So did anybody manage to get his interface working with the cardbus through the express card adapter? I am now in the situation to start buying adapters and eliminate the not working ones on a list. Are there any experiences you can share to avoid me testing the same stuff again (maybe with a link or a model name)? My system is a Dell studio 1747 with Windows 7. So who got a working adapter under Windows 7 and which one is it?

cheers

Christian

thx man,

and where did you buy yours? How much was it? Are you running Windows 7?

cheers

And there is not even a little picture that will help us to identify the unit in a german online shop? Anything special maybe in the form of the case of this device?

What a good thread! I?ve also the "problem" with my PCMCIA-Card (Cardbus adapter to express card), so it was difficult to find a new notebook for my Multiface + PCMCIA. "DerDax" meant, that Lenovo notebooks doesn?t work with the adapter. Anybody knows, which notebook(s) works 100% with this adapter (Win 7)?

@ biergary:(german/deutsch) Hast du eine funktionierende Adapterl?sung gefunden? W?rde mich sehr interessieren. Z.Zt. finde ich auf ebay nur den Adapter von "Lindy". Falls ja, welches Notebook hast du am Start? Danke!

Thanks & greetz ... Dan