Firewire issue affecting all the Dell Core Duo notebooks

[jorvg]

On my Inspiron 6400 system I have to disable both the DVD drive and my Wireless adapter for the DPC graph to be clear. Has anyone else had this experience? If I request replacements for the DVD drive and Wireless adapter, which models should I request from Dell?

[Ninjagecko]

This is the most terrifying thread ever.

Is this firewire issue restricted to Dells? Are the new 1420's having the same problem?

[jcschild]

HI,

a little info on why your having issues.

Scott
ADK Pro Audio

Issues with the majority of new laptops.

Not all laptops are created equal. While they may appear to have the same specs, (processor, memory, harddrive) the performance for Pro audio is drastically different.
Most name brand laptops will NOT work for Pro audio as they are plagued with resource allocation issues, IRQ conflicts and poor bios'.

Contrary to popular belief no one makes their own laptops. In Other words Dell is made by someone as is Apple, Gateway etc.
There are 9 or so ODM's (manufacturer's of laptops) in the world.
Clevo, Quanta (makes the new MAC and higher end HPs and others), Compal, Mitac, Asus, MSI, Twinhead, Uniwill/ECS, Arima, Movita.


While this has to do with both Intel and AMD I will confine this to Intel as AMD Laptops are underpowered.

Intel Core 2 Duo, and Santa Rosa (core 2 duo with 800 fsb)

1) Chipsets: the main chipset is the Intel 945 PM/GM (gm means onboard video) And this is not the issue. The Chipset issue is what is being used for the Cardbus(if it actually still has one), Memory card reader, modem, network, Firewire. or what's called combo chipsets. (all in 1)

Ricoh: (asus and others) a lot of incompatibility with audio interfaces and general poor performance.
ENE: (compal and others) same as above, the Cardbus is horrid. Usually with Via firewire. The via firewire does better than ricoh.
Realtek: now found on several laptops, not just as audio, but audio, card reader, Cardbus, modem, Firewire.
Texas Instruments: firewire and Cardbus (again cardbus is gone from most new laptops). The chipset to have!

2) Bios: most laptops are 512k some are 1 meg, where a desktop will have 4meg- 8meg.
This is probably the biggest issue. The Bios for the most part is responsible for IRQ and resource allocation. A small and poorly written bios is what causes so many things To be lumped on to 1 IRQ.
ACPI handles this.
Microsoft developer site

with laptops you have “hot swap” devices (cardbus, Express slot and more) this adds to the issue. Understanding that resource allocation is memory based (name space and virtual memory), A small bios has a hard time allocating space for all potential product IDs.

Add to that we now have PCIe even more bios issues arise.
More from MS.

“Insufficient bridge resources appear when the platform BIOS cannot assign appropriate PCI-bridge resource windows during POST. Systems supporting hot-plug PCI devices are particularly problematic. When a PCI device can be hot-plugged behind a PCI bridge at run time, it is impossible for the BIOS to ascertain during POST how large a bridge resource window must be to accommodate a device. Additionally, a PCI bridge device might be hot plugged in certain situations—for example, in generic docking solutions that connect through CardBus adapters”

“””The previous scenarios are exacerbated with the emergence of PCI Express. PCI Express defines many bridge devices that are used to represent ports, thereby making complex bridge hierarchies more prevalent. Additionally, PCI Express hot-plug will be widely used in desktop and workstation client systems, so hot-plug scenarios will not be limited to large servers.

“” So small bios means less ability to handle ACPI steering and resources in “virtual space”

3) Expectation of ODM: most laptops are NOT designed to be used as workstations. The vendors never expected this. Laptops are designed to be light weight, long battery life used mostly by biz people on the go, or typical home user surfing the net, playing music. Therefore they program the bios in a careless manor.

Here is more about how its left to the individual ODM to program the bios.

“””The rules for the above programmable ranges are:
1. ALL of these ranges MUST be unique and NON-OVERLAPPING. It is the BIOS or system designers responsibility to limit memory population so that adequate PCI, PCI Express, High BIOS, PCI Express Memory Mapped space, and APIC memory space can be allocated.
2. In the case of overlapping ranges with memory, the memory decode will be given priority.
3. There are no Hardware Interlocks to prevent problems in the case of overlapping ranges.
4. Accesses to overlapped ranges may produce indeterminate results.
5. The only peer-to-peer cycles allowed below the top of memory (register TOLUD) are DMI to PCI Express VGA range writes. Note that peer to peer cycles to the Internal Graphics VGA range are not supported.”””

Taken from Intels white papers Here

A few manufacturers put more thought into it. Again the more expensive TI chipset is a good indication that there was consideration for use as a workstation. The bios will be a bit more open and better programming as well as usually larger. The more different chipsets there are internally the more likely they will have their own resources, as opposed to everything in 1 chipset. So that about covers the less obvious (HDD, ram etc)

[AchternStyg]

Dude, I've read your post somewhere else before, it's identical to another forum. Despite the fact that it took a whole page, it doesnt say much.
The point is there are some incompatibilities on the market at the moment between different firewire chipset and firewire audio cards. I had a hard time with my Inspiron 6400 and M-audio Firewire Audiophile and I kept on blaming the Ricoh chipset. It turns out M-audio sucks as a brand with a lot of the new laptops, but brands like Presonus and Echo work perfectly with Ricoh. The proof? See 3 presonus ( 1 firestudio and 2 digimax) chained up and hooked to a Dell 6400. Take the first link of this google search: ( the actual link I couldnt post here as it has the word c ock in it .
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...le&btnG=Search


So, who is to blame?
My advice for all the people who wanna have a laptop+soundcard going is to read up a bit more and find a combination of laptop and soundcard that's reported to work properly. If you already have a laptop, go to a shop and try some cards. And give a chance to the Inspiron I am happy with it ( again ).

[AchternStyg]

Originally Posted by jorvg

On my Inspiron 6400 system I have to disable both the DVD drive and my Wireless adapter for the DPC graph to be clear. Has anyone else had this experience? If I request replacements for the DVD drive and Wireless adapter, which models should I request from Dell?

So, if you have a Toshiba Samsung drive ( TSS ) it's very likely that that's the problem. I got dell to replace mine with a NEC after they read this forum. I am surprised about the wireless card. Which one is it? Do you disable them from the Device Manager?

[jorvg]

Originally Posted by AchternStyg

So, if you have a Toshiba Samsung drive ( TSS ) it's very likely that that's the problem. I got dell to replace mine with a NEC after they read this forum. I am surprised about the wireless card. Which one is it? Do you disable them from the Device Manager?

You're right I have the TSS drive. My wireless card is the "Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-card Rev 4.1".
Yes, if I disable both from the Device Manager I get a clean DPC graph and firewire audio (Mackie D.2 mixer) works without a single glitch. I tried just disabling the Wi-fi radio and this doesn't do it, I have to disable it and the DVD drive in the Device Manager.

[ekwipt]

Originally Posted by AchternStyg

So, who is to blame?
My advice for all the people who wanna have a laptop+soundcard going is to read up a bit more and find a combination of laptop and soundcard that's reported to work properly. If you already have a laptop, go to a shop and try some cards. And give a chance to the Inspiron I am happy with it ( again ).

It seems to be a mixture of everything, bad drivers from the laptop manufacturers, bad drivers from the interface suppliers and cheap knockoff versions of hardware.

[jcschild]

Originally Posted by AchternStyg

Dude, I've read your post somewhere else before, it's identical to another forum. Despite the fact that it took a whole page, it doesnt say much.
The point is there are some incompatibilities on the market at the moment between different firewire chipset and firewire audio cards. I had a hard time with my Inspiron 6400 and M-audio Firewire Audiophile and I kept on blaming the Ricoh chipset. It turns out M-audio sucks as a brand with a lot of the new laptops, but brands like Presonus and Echo work perfectly with Ricoh. The proof? See 3 presonus ( 1 firestudio and 2 digimax) chained up and hooked to a Dell 6400. Take the first link of this google search: ( the actual link I couldnt post here as it has the word c ock in it .
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...le&btnG=Search


So, who is to blame?
My advice for all the people who wanna have a laptop+soundcard going is to read up a bit more and find a combination of laptop and soundcard that's reported to work properly. If you already have a laptop, go to a shop and try some cards. And give a chance to the Inspiron I am happy with it ( again ).

presonus? LOL

thats one of the units we use to verify if a laptop will work. if the presonus does most anything else will. as they are the most persnickity. 1/2 the presonus units will not work on Ricoh.

Maudio is almost never a problem. (win xp not Vista crap)

what i posted says alot if you can understand it. and its based on testing over 20 laptops in the last 8 months or so.
Every TI chipset unit i tested worked perfectly to 64 buffer.
the others mostly fall on thier face with 512 buffer being the best.
(assuming a real audio test not some podunk 8 tracks, no effects or samples.)


but hey thanks for commmenting.

Scott
ADK

bottom line Ricoh and ENE suck and TI is by far better.

[AchternStyg]

Originally Posted by jcschild

presonus? LOL

thats one of the units we use to verify if a laptop will work. if the presonus does most anything else will. as they are the most persnickity. 1/2 the presonus units will not work on Ricoh.

Maudio is almost never a problem. (win xp not Vista crap)

what i posted says alot if you can understand it. and its based on testing over 20 laptops in the last 8 months or so.
Every TI chipset unit i tested worked perfectly to 64 buffer.
the others mostly fall on thier face with 512 buffer being the best.
(assuming a real audio test not some podunk 8 tracks, no effects or samples.)


but hey thanks for commmenting.

Scott
ADK

bottom line Ricoh and ENE suck and TI is by far better.

So, what you posted is too many words for nothing, man. You just copy pasted from some places.I understand what you wrote but I think most of is is irrelevant stuff. And as I said, I saw the identically same post on another forum. This forum here and what I am saying refers strictly to Dell, and specifically to Inspiron 6400. Even if you tried 8 laptops and the ones with Ricoh chipset performed badly, I have counter examples for you where the Ricoh chipset in DELL 6400 performs great. So then its not the chipset that's faulty but probably other things ( like the mother board or the implementation of that chipset through drivers or BIOS) that sucks.
To argue with you:
1) Look at the first link in the google search I posted above. You will see a ricoh chipset on a 6400 Inspiron running 3 big presonus cards desy chained together, all at the same time. That's your proof that Presonus and Ricoh work great even when pushed to 30in/30 out.
There are plenty of reports that the Firebox works well with the Inspiron 6400. Also, the echo audiofire cards seem to work fine with the 6400. On the other hand the M-audio firewire series sucks with Ricoh processor and I read quite some posts about it. So what you say it's not true, it seems the Presonus is the least picky about firewire chipset and M-audio the most troublesome. I can look up those posts again, if you're interested. Also, if you read this entire thread from the beginning till the end, it is confirmed that the firebox worked more than fine with the 6400.

[AchternStyg]

Originally Posted by jorvg

You're right I have the TSS drive. My wireless card is the "Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-card Rev 4.1".
Yes, if I disable both from the Device Manager I get a clean DPC graph and firewire audio (Mackie D.2 mixer) works without a single glitch. I tried just disabling the Wi-fi radio and this doesn't do it, I have to disable it and the DVD drive in the Device Manager.

Dude, do it the other way around : disable only the dvd drive and see if it works. Not the wireless, and then the wireless + dvd drive.
Also, when you check, dont run a DAW, dont connect a sound card, just have a look at the latency checker program. If there are not red spikes when ONLY the drive is disabled, then the drive is your problem. If there's still red spikes with disabled drive, then disable also the wireless module. And see if the spikes go away after that.