Hello
i have almost 3 years samsung ativ book 2 laptop and i got recenetly from someone m audio firewire 410 sound card.
my quetion is how can i connect the firewire to the laptop there isnt pcmcia in the new laptops.
i never opened laptop inside to see whats going on there.
is there any option to plug there firewire card , lets say ill pull out the extra vga output and plug there firewire card {if this card exist at all}?
thx

 

you'll be able to hook up any firewire 400 or 800 device to a laptop with thunderbolt ports. but without thunderbolt/firewire ports i have no idea.
pulling out a VGA output sounds dangerous, probably easier to just buy a nice cheap usb sound card

 

OMG i can't stop laughing...



sorry my friend, but you can't just do that...

 

search by model number if your laptop supports inserting PCMCIA cards. if yes, here is your solution: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=pcmcia_firewire-_-15-283-035-_-Product

...and what did the VGA port ever did to you that you want a divorce?

 

put firewire or thunderbolt
no there isnt pcmcia

 

what r u laughing about
i have option to plug one more monitor , i ment to pull out the extra vga port.
its like u have 2 usb pci card in your pc motherboard, think so.

 

any links to get those ports to pc laptop

 

The only laptop you can connect the firewire audio interface to must have either Firewire, PCMCIA, ExpressCard, or Thunderbolt port that you can use only with a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter. The cheapest solution is to buy a second hand Lenovo Thinkpad T-series laptop with Firewire. These work with picky Firewire controllers even though the chipset is not TI in most cases. I only buy Thinkpads and love them for they're also built like a tank.

The more expensive solution is to buy any laptop with PCMCIA [very old standard found on 10y old laptops] or ExpressCard slot, so you can buy a PCMCIA/ExpressCard Firewire card and shove it inside it. A laptop with PCMCIA could actually cost you next to nothing these days so it's not exactly a very expensive solution in that case, but you can still find a new laptop with ExpressCard and they cost a lot. Same thing with Thunderbolt currently.

Laptops with Thunderbolt cost a lot, but that is the best solution in the long run as the best new audio interfaces come with Thunderbolt. However, it is still a bit hard to find a laptop with Thunderbolt, unless you want an Apple Macbook Pro. Macbooks come with a Thunderbolt by default and cost an arm and a leg, but they are built superbly on the other hand.

I personally just use second hand Thinkpads. I pretty much buy every second hand Thinkpad with Firewire that I stumble upon.

Cheers!

 

I had this interface. You need a FireWire controller with Texas Instruments (TI) chipset, otherwise you'll have problems like loosing connection at random.

 

You can pick up a refurbished 15" 2011 Macbook Pro from newegg.com for about $600-$650. They have Firewire 800 and Thunderbolt 1, can take up to 16GBs of DDR3 RAM and have 2.2 GHz quad-core i7 processors. In fact, after you get that, you may want find a better audio interface.

 

There are other ways to get Firewire, for example rewiring non-whitelisted miniPCIe port, but a laptop with Expresscard is your best bet. You can still find very recent laptops (2013) with Expresscard 54 for good price.