Thinkpads Forum

hey folks...first post here....been a Thinkpad user for nearly 10 years now (love 'em...the best lappies hands down) and been lurking in the background here for a couple of years....and now I'm finally looking to purchase one of the T400/T500 models (awesome discounts now!) and have a particular tech question that's not mentioned on the Lenovo Tech Sheets.

What is the maker/brand of the FIREWIRE 1394 Chipset on either T400/T500?

Silly question it may seem, but one of the primary purposes of this new laptop would be for music audio use (recording) and the firewire chipset that is preferable with external audio equipment that uses the Firewire protocal is the Texas Instruments chipset.

My wife's T61p has a Ricoh firewire chipset = no good.

Best way to check is to look at the Device Manager under IEEE 1394 Host controller and hopefully it should say Texas Instruments, Ricoh, or some other brand.

Many thanks for your help!!

P.S.: I really wish they would state this in their specs!! Unfortunately for audio use...this is a major concern for laptop purchases!

My T400 has the Ricoh 1394 chipset.

Likewise in my T500: (As identified by the Linux kernel.)

-hank

My T500 has a Ricoh too !

cool...so it looks like Lenovo has gone Ricoh now over the Texas Instruments chipset!

Many thanks for your feedback guys!

hey Harryc - how are you liking the 14.1" screen? Is yours an LED screen? I'm seriously leaning towards the 14.1" LED now (WXGA+) as the T500 doesn't have the LED in WXGA+ yet...as well as being a nice balance between screen size (for music recording at home) and portability when on the road (weight and size).

Yeah, my W500 has a ricoh chip. Kinda glitchy at times with my M-Audio firewire 410 (rock solid with the TI chip on my old Compaq R4000). Drivers tend to crash if it is hot-removed. Hot-add is fine, however. Once it's up and working, it's fine, as long as it's the ONLY firewire device connected. Didn't matter (device chaining) with my old TI chipset.

comptiger5000 wrote:Yeah, my W500 has a ricoh chip. Kinda glitchy at times with my M-Audio firewire 410 (rock solid with the TI chip on my old Compaq R4000). Drivers tend to crash if it is hot-removed. Hot-add is fine, however. Once it's up and working, it's fine, as long as it's the ONLY firewire device connected. Didn't matter (device chaining) with my old TI chipset.

comptiger....a fellow musician! what kind of latency are you getting on the M-Audio 410 via the Ricoh chip then?

I read somewhere else where the dude had problems with a Ricoh chipset and had better luck with a USB Audio Kontrol 1....getting down to 1.5ms latency!

I really wish at least Lenovo would keep the Texas Instruments chipset in all the models - they would easily take over the PC audio market as everyone would know for sure it came with a TI chipset. Right now it's hit and miss with these things.

Lenovo - are you listening!??

Haven't tested the latency, I don't really use it for music. I just needed a solid external sound card. If you give me a simple way to test latency, I can try it out.

comptiger5000 wrote:Haven't tested the latency, I don't really use it for music. I just needed a solid external sound card. If you give me a simple way to test latency, I can try it out.

I've come across a separate program in the music scene that measures latency, but I can't remember the name and have to do some searching if I didn't download it somewhere already. I'll have a looksie and if I can find it....will post it up.

Thanks again...and at least hopefully you're enjoying the 410 as that could be a viable option for me as well (got my eye on the Presonus Firebox - www.presonus.com).

OK, found it! It's called: DPC Latency Checker

Thesycon's DPC Latency Checker is a Windows tool that analyses the capabilities of a computer system to handle real-time data streams properly. It may help to find the cause for interruptions in real-time audio and video streams, also known as drop-outs. The program supports Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 x64, Windows Vista, Windows Vista x64.

So make sure you have your Firewire 410 as the default soundcard first before running it. Also...it's a simple tool, just double-click it - no install.

Let us know what numbers you get when you run it at the setting you have now.

On the note about the 410 being finicky as well....there are a few things you can do to "help" the connection to the 410...like disabling the wireless, using a GOOD/BETTER Firewire cable (see the post about the dude that finally tried the Edirol firewire cable) and some other things. See this thread on the Presonus Forums regarding the Ricoh chipset; Presonus don't recommend the Ricoh chipset, but some users are having success, so like in your case as well....it seems to be a total mixed bag. Unfortunately Presonus has to put up with it since most laptop makers are going to the Ricoh or Agere chipset...who knows, maybe the TI chipset is just way too expensive....I don't know.

http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.p ... ight=ricoh

As well...you might be able to get better results with the 410 by deactivating several devices; you can make "Hardware Profiles" in order to easily switch to that "mode" where the 410 performs better.

http://www.lockergnome.com/windows/2005 ... les-in-xp/

thanks for your help fellas....I just pulled the trigger on a T400 tonight. ETA: 12/22 - hopefully it'll arrive sooner.

comptiger - here's the other latency tool as well that I've come across that is also respected in audio circles:

The CEntrance ASIO Latency Test Utility is a Precision Windows™ tool to measure audio delay in your computer setup. It measures the true round-trip latency of your computer audio setup, from input to output via an ASIO driver. You can use the LTU to test different hardware, drivers and applications.

ASIO Latency Test Utility