I recently purchased an M-Audio Firewire 410 with Pro-Tools 7.3. I'm trying to use it on my Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505 laptop. The Laptop has a dual core Pentium 4 processor, 1.6ghz and 1 gb of ram.

So far all I’ve had is frustration. I can get the 410 to load, but it’s very unstable and Pro Tools will barely launch at all. I’ve setup the PC according the Pro tools and M-Audio recommendation and the only other software on the machine is the XP Home OS. Can you offer some assistance or am I stuck with hardware and software I can’t use. Thanks.

I had the same problem with my HP, then I got the sonica livetracker. I just upgraded to the livetracker II, both run protools.

paul.

The firewire port on the dells are ricoh and are useless for recording. I just build me a new system after months of attempting to "fix" the issue. The best bet is if you are softsynth / ITB it is feasible to run Sonar / Nuendo / etc. If you need to recording full sessions return the dell ASAP and either build a reputable system, or have the pro's here in the forum guide you in the right direction.

I have a FW410 too. My computers are an old athlon xp 1800+ (yes, I know it's only 1.5 gHz) on a iWill kk266-r motherboard and a Toshiba Satellite a135-s4527. I've had no problems with either computer, except I have to use the power supply with the FW410 when I use it with the laptop since it only has the 4 pin firewire connector.

I was concerned about buying the FW410 since most of the user reviews say that the FW410 drops out or totally stops working. I find it to be extremely stable on my desktop & it pretty much runs all day, 7 days a week (all 8 analog outs & the spdif) without using the 410's power supply. I love it!

I would buy a different firewire card or get away from Dell (as well as Gateway).

will the m-audio 410 work on an intel mac book pro using logic 7? does anyone know?

Here are 2 PCMCIA cards that use the Texas Instruments 1394 chipset.

LaCie - PC Card FireWire 800

FireCard 400™ 1394a PCMCIA (Cardbus) adapter

Hope it helps resolve this problem and helps prevent future firewire issues.

The Ricoh R5C832 1394 chipset is terrible for recording and unfortunately used on several laptop brands, from gateway to lenovo.

Cheers, Nate