hardminder wrote:I plugged the PCIe Firewire card
https://www.siig.com/products/it-produc ... -pcie.html
to my new one. There the fun began...

No display, the lights on my Saffire are on, so the power is travelling, the fans on the GPU are on but no display. When I disconnect the firewire card, I get a display. Everything works fine.

I read online that this specific SIIG card has compatibility issues with a lot of other devices/boards, so I went to buy another one, another brand. Found that one on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07C8Z ... UTF8&psc=1

I'm feeling too lazy to trawl through the whole thread, but this should be the answer.

Your original card was based around the XIO2200 chipset which whilst recommended for the longest time, it was replaced about a decade ago by TI and this was before W7 came out, let alone W10.

Microsoft removed support for the XIO2200 chip in W10 a while back and the advice is to find a card with a XIO2213A or XIO2213B varient, which will also be a 3 port card.

The card you bought to test recently seems to be based around the ViA controller and I'm not overly surprised that didn't work, compatability there for audio handling has always been patchy.

Pete Kaine wrote:

hardminder wrote:I plugged the PCIe Firewire card
https://www.siig.com/products/it-produc ... -pcie.html
to my new one. There the fun began...

No display, the lights on my Saffire are on, so the power is travelling, the fans on the GPU are on but no display. When I disconnect the firewire card, I get a display. Everything works fine.

I read online that this specific SIIG card has compatibility issues with a lot of other devices/boards, so I went to buy another one, another brand. Found that one on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07C8Z ... UTF8&psc=1

Your original card was based around the XIO2200 chipset which whilst recommended for the longest time, it was replaced about a decade ago by TI and this was before W7 came out, let alone W10.

Microsoft removed support for the XIO2200 chip in W10 a while back and the advice is to find a card with a XIO2213A or XIO2213B varient, which will also be a 3 port card.

I just bought that card. I didn't see your post before ordering it :
https://www.vantecusa.com/products_deta ... ards#tab-2

The chipset is listed as XIO1223B. I see it with my own eyes "XIO1223BZAY". I get the exact same result as I did with my first card : no display on my monitors, no way to tell if the system boots completely. When I unplug the card, everything runs normally.

I purchased a second hand Scarlett 18i6 for 60$ for the moment. My suggestion for anyone with a new W10 system and a Firewire interface would be not to lose your time with it. Get yourself a USB interface. I tried 4 different PCIe firewire cards, including one with the advised chipset, with no sucess.

Thanks to anyone who tried helping but I think firewire interfaces will soon be a thing of the past, sadly, mine was still in perfect working condition.

hardminder wrote:My suggestion for anyone with a new W10 system and a Firewire interface would be not to lose your time with it. Get yourself a USB interface. I tried 4 different PCIe firewire cards, including one with the advised chipset, with no sucess.

Thanks to anyone who tried helping but I think firewire interfaces will soon be a thing of the past, sadly, mine was still in perfect working condition.

I tend to go along with this advice - to my mind Firewire has long been a source of PC compatibility problems due to Firewire card chipsets, and when I recently bought a new interface I opted for USB.

There may be question marks about USB low latency performance with some audio interfaces, but I bypassed these issues by choosing an RME interface, since their drivers are renowned for their performance.


Martin

Martin Walker wrote:

hardminder wrote:My suggestion for anyone with a new W10 system and a Firewire interface would be not to lose your time with it. Get yourself a USB interface. I tried 4 different PCIe firewire cards, including one with the advised chipset, with no sucess.

Thanks to anyone who tried helping but I think firewire interfaces will soon be a thing of the past, sadly, mine was still in perfect working condition.

I tend to go along with this advice - to my mind Firewire has long been a source of PC compatibility problems due to Firewire card chipsets, and when I recently bought a new interface I opted for USB.

There may be question marks about USB low latency performance with some audio interfaces, but I bypassed these issues by choosing an RME interface, since their drivers are renowned for their performance.


Martin

I still have a Firewire setup and that remains working even after the latest Win10 update. My firewire card is a Sonnet Technologies Allegro FW800-E PCIe-to-FireWire 800 TI XIO2213 and it works with a Focusrite Liquid 56

However, I sort of get the feeling that Firewire days are numbered. Next interface purchace will be USB3 (if there are any USB3 interfaces about). That said, I also bought into MLAN (dodged a bullet there!) and now of course there is Thunderbolt - when will manufacturers settle on one standard like they did with MIDI, and as far as I know, ethernet can be used which is ubiquitous and can handle sustained transfer of large amounts of data? - doesn't Dante do that?

Hi all - going to chime in here. I have a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. Personally, I've had great success with firewire over the years (DV, scanners, audio interfaces). While USB was buggy and slow and latency-prone, my m-audio (can't recall the model) always worked like a charm. Anyway, I upgraded - maybe in December - to the latest Win10 (greater than 1809). I too now have problems. I've tried two separate firewire cards - both with the TI chipset. Works OK after a reboot but eventually, the communication will cease between the card and device (audio interface or scanner). On occasion, the system will lock up bad - then it turns black with the fans maxed out until shut down manually. No core dump. I wasn't aware that Focusrite warned about upgrading past 1809. Now I have to determine if I "go back." From my reading around the web, this seems to be a windows issue - not hardware. My hardware worked fine on 1809, then I wiped and reinstalled 1903 and firewire started acting buggy... Really sucks!

Hi tboydva, and welcome to the SOS Forums! 8-)

Also, thanks for such a useful first post :thumbup:


Martin

So, in the meantime since the first post I've seen this myself and it's also why I pulled the Prime X570 from my specs over the last few weeks.

Some point between launch and now there has been a BIOS update that breaks Firewire support. If you roll back to the earlier ones, you should be able to find a BIOS that still works, although given the fixes rolled out recently, I'd be loathed to do so.

I escalated it, they said they'd look into it and I've pulled the hardware until they come back with an answer I'm happy with.

hardminder wrote:The chipset is listed as XIO1223B. I see it with my own eyes "XIO1223BZAY". I get the exact same result as I did with my first card : no display on my monitors, no way to tell if the system boots completely. When I unplug the card, everything runs normally.

Yes, sorry, it's a new fault specific to that mainboard range.

hardminder wrote:I purchased a second hand Scarlett 18i6 for 60$ for the moment. My suggestion for anyone with a new W10 system and a Firewire interface would be not to lose your time with it. Get yourself a USB interface. I tried 4 different PCIe firewire cards, including one with the advised chipset, with no sucess.

Ironically they tend to work fine over a Thunderbolt connection + converter. The question is if it is worth it to buy the AIC+Converter+cable for about £150 or just buy a new interface... I imagine for most it's the latter.

Hi All,

Was reading this and I had the same problems with my Asus Prime x570-P motherboard.
I build my new PC and inserted all my drives and cards in it. On first boot only a black screen. Monitor got a signal but no Bios no nothing.

After removing some hardware I found out it was my PCI-Express Firewire card from DAWI-control. After pulling the card out al worked and system booted.

After reading some forums I came across a message on the Creative Soundblast forum on which a lot of people also had troubles with their Soundblaster cards with weird behaviour after the newest AMD Bios.

So what happened is that AMD turned on a 10-bit Tag Field, which is only available on PCI-e Gen4 devices. This results in compatibility issues with older Gen PCI-e cards like my firewire card.

So I went into my BIOS and searched for the 10-bit tag field and dissabled it. Also put the compatibility on Gen3 for the PCI-E slot I inserted my Firewirecard afterward and voila systems boot and Windows 10 even loaded the ' Texas Instruments 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller' driver in the device Manager.

Hooked up my TC Electronic Konnekt Live firewire soundcard and it is working.

Hope some others find this helpful.

Regards,

Andreas

Dremix wrote:So what happened is that AMD turned on a 10-bit Tag Field, which is only available on PCI-e Gen4 devices. This results in compatibility issues with older Gen PCI-e cards like my firewire card.

Interesting find, I've got a few more cards I may need to try that on!

Interesting find, I've got a few more cards I may need to try that on!

Let me know if you where succesful. This can help others who read this message and are having issues.

I am running Windows 10 ver 1909 build 18363.778 with a LSI Agere Firewire 400 Card (Chipset 5811) connected to my Focusrite Liquid 56 without ANY problems. There was an issue originally with build 1909 Microsoft acknowledged due to a new memory compression algorithm. THIS was sorted.

I have just bought my Liquid 56 cos of one single reason THUNDERBOLT. Next year 2021 USB4 will finally be released and basically it will be Thunderbolt 3. Similarly MIdi2 will also finally appear but my guess is it will take manufacturers longer to design and release anything that takes advantage of it - wait and see.

So in answer to your problem.

It should work with the latest version of WIndows 10 (x64). I see no problems between motherboard and Firewire card, no recourse issues. I would start with installing the firewire card in the motherboard with ONLY the Graphics card - NO HARD DRIVES etc, should boot to bios. Me personally would then install Windows on an old hard drive just to double check all is well before I reconnected my old original drives - save screwing them up.

I am running an old Gigabyte 990x mobo (cos it has a M2 20Gb socket) with a FX8350 cpu cos I am waiting to upgrade next year to Ryzen when the new boards have USB4/Thunderbolt as standard - only ASRock has it currently and thats a none starter for me *very bad experiences with them many years ago). Focusrite clearly stated all their firewire devices work with thunderbolt !!!

There is a tool Focusrite recommend (on their website) to test your Firewire card ohciTool2.exe NOTE not all cards have been tested I have some TI chipset Firewire cards that it said were UNTESTED so unknown compatibility issues !!!! so I stuck the Via Agere ones in my Music computer machines (windows 10) and there fine - 100% solid no issues WHATSO EVER

Just a further note from my experience

IF on boot up your get a popping sound from your audio interface/speakers no problem. (on my Liquid 56 the FW Audio flashes)

Let your computer boot up as normal. Give it a couple of minutes then open the Sapphire Mix Control. It happens to me sometimes cos the sample rate is higher than 48 kHz - Firewire 400 will not work above this !!! I change this to 48 kHz and click H/W control a couple of times and then all is well

uselessoldman wrote:It happens to me sometimes cos the sample rate is higher than 48 kHz - Firewire 400 will not work above this !!! I change this to 48 kHz and click H/W control a couple of times and then all is well

This must be specific to your system. I use a Saffire Pro 26io on Firewire 400 at 96kHz sampling rate with no problems.

I know all about the TI chipset issues, but I'll just mention that I've also had problem-free results in some systems with both Lucent/Agere and Via chipsets on PCI/PCIe cards.

Cards are extremely cheap on eBay so it's always something you could try.

I haven't use many Focusrite interfaces, though.