Topic: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Just thought I would share my joy... I use a Multiface I, and after purchasing a fully loaded Dell m6600, I discovered to my dismay that my new laptop wouldn't work with the RME HDSP CardBus interface.  So I took a chance and ordered a Expresscard to cardbus adapter from Amazon and lo and behold, my old RME Cardbus interface performs beautifully.  Rock solid I might add.

Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Expr … roduct_top

This is even better considering the problems I had matching an Audio Card with ProTools 10 (which seems to love RME, but so far hates Focusrite and God knows what else).

If you're like me and stuck with an Audio unfriendly laptop, and don't want to go through expensive upgrades, or a lot of frustration playing hit and miss with different components, this might be a happy solution.

Steve <3

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RME Multiface I with PCMCIA Adapter (StarTech.com ExpressCard to CardBus Laptop Adapter CB2EC)

ProTools 10
Dell m6600
Dual 7200 RPM Hard Drives
Core i7
16G Ram
NVidia Quadro 3000m

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

thanx for the info.
has anyone tried it on Linux?

best

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Hi stevedecay. What O/S are you running? Just trying to find out if it might work for my Win7 64bit Dell E6510.

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

This is to confirm stevedecay's finding that the StarTech adapter works in more than one laptop with the CardBus adapter and Multiface I. Both mine and stevedecay's laptops are DELL machines.

After some incomplete/contradictory posts from RME, and after reading stevedecay's post https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=14575 I thought I'd make the leap and buy the same StarTech adapter. It arrived today. I plugged it in to the ExpressCard slot and Windows installed the [PCI Bridge] drivers, asked for reboot. I inserted the Cardbus in the StarTech, rebooted . .  and . . TotalMix came straight up. Audio seems to be playing fine with the RME playing media files off the drive. I'll install my DAW and effects, and some complex multi-track mixes over the next week or two and post if anything doesn't work as it might otherwise.
Just saved myself the cost of replacing the RME for the cost of a Startech card [£40]. Yay!

5

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Be warned that according to current knowledge the CardBus will no longer work under Windows 10.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Current knowledge is always changing :-)

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

I have a Z97 machine (meaning PCi bridge) on W10/64,  that is happy with a cardbus. YMMV...

I would not dare going for a (rather expensive) PCMCIA to axpresscard adapter though. Rather buy an second hand express card for little more money and avoid bridging altogether.

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Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

rojer64, according to your other post you do not have a RME CardBus interface, but an ExpressCard. If you never tried to use the audio interface via your CardBus slot then your post is confusing and misleading.

Otherwise more details would be needed as it would be the first W10 machine ever where CardBus audio works.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Matthias

According to my other post, I have both cardbus and expresscard. I read that it came off as confusing and I apologize for that. I didn't intend to mislead anyone. Please feel free to edit and point the misleading parts or remove the post if it helps.

As for adding details on the W10 situation:
The cardbus used to sit in a PCI adapter with r5c475 chip (driver indicated R5C485). The Mobo is a Gigabyte Z97x SOC FORCE. W10 is a clean install but I did first upgrade from W8.1 which was itself an upgrade from 8.0. It seemed to be OK back then but I made few tests and quickly ran a clean install to start fresh.
Software is SAC, REAPER and BITWIG STUDIO, all running concurrently with few tracks (8-12) at 1X32 samples buffers. I do need multi client driver but don't use WDM at all.

I recently bought the expresscard to be rid of the bridge altogether, as I plan for heavier projects. I use some Vsti with either guitar or keyboard input and usually stick to the lowest latency at the expense of CPU load. The CPU is a pentium at 4.3 ghz with a bus at 100. Memory (2X8GB) runs at 1600 since I swapped to low voltage sticks but the previous sticks (4X4GB) were at 2400 and worked fine too, even shaving a few ns from overall memory latency. Power requirements is what motivated the move to DDR3L: the PC sits in a rack and goes on stage.

I can see little to add, except maybe repeat that the PCiE adapter looks transparent to Windows, as opposed to the PCI adapter which required its own driver (present in Windows 10). That seems key to me but I may be wrong. Also the PCi bridge on GA-z97x SOC is tied to a PCiE port (on PCH) that is exclusive of another one, connected to the CPU. That warrants some BIOS tweaking. Also, both Multiface or Digiface couldn't recover from sleep state, S3 or higher but were fine with S1.

Then I'm out of my depths and I couldn't explain how I had cardbus working on W10. I just sold it with the adapter, bundled with a Digiface and I won't be able to help investigate further with this machine. However, I have a second cardbus for a redundant system on W7. I plan to upgrade this old core2 duo  tablet which has both cardbus and expresscard; I'll make sure to report of either success or failure when I get there. Thanks for pointing out that I definitely need to image the partition before switching.
Regards,
Roger.

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Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

Thanks for all the details. My guess is that you had working pcmcia drivers because of the Realtek R5C485 chip, which uses its own drivers. Interesting information, I will try to find out more about this.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: RME PCMCIA / Cardbus works with Expresscard adapter Hooray!

R5C485 was made by Ricoh. They used to be dirt cheap but can only be found at inflated prices by now, due to scarcity, I suppose.