z60 and firewire soundcard - clicks nad pops when using usb

[Am]

hi there

I bought z60 mainly because of it's built-in firewire port.
I've just bought firewire audio interface - Presonus Firebox, and to my horror I've found out that when using usb mouse there are clicks and pops in audio.
I've already disabled usb port at the back which shares IRQ with firewire port (17). The rest of usb ports has IRQ nr 16. It doesn't change anything.

Also I hear pops when i minimize fullscreen windows.

Should I blame the soundcard driver, or Z60 architecture? can I change firewire resources allocation in any way?

thanks a lot
Am

[a31pguy]

wow - i have a z60m and I haven't had this issue. But then again - I'm not using a firewire sound card. I'd check with the sound card vendor first.

[Am]

wow - i have a z60m and I haven't had this issue. But then again - I'm not using a firewire sound card.

Well, then it's quite impossible for you to have those issues.

I'm posting it mainly for the information of people which choose Thinkpads with professional audio production in mind (there is lot of them).

I talked with Presonus staff member - he told me that, to my surprise, they had multiple issues with built-in firewire ports (they interfere with usb, since they probably use some combo chipset. btw. does anyone know what firewire chipset is used in Z60m?) and he recommended getting separate PCMCIA firewire, like:

CoolGear PCMCIA LAPTOP FIREWIRE CardBus to IEEE1394 FireWire Ruggedized

or

Adaptec AFW-1430V FireConnect 3Port 1394 FireWire CardBus Adapter

which received good comments from fw soundcards users.


I'll give it a try.

[a31pguy]

I believe it's a Ricoh R5C841 chipset. A combined Ricoh Cardbus, SD, SDIO, MS, MSPro, xD and FireWire controller

[Am]

I believe it's a Ricoh R5C841 chipset. A combined Ricoh Cardbus, SD, SDIO, MS, MSPro, xD and FireWire controller

Great, thanks for that.

I think I got rid of USB caused noises (not sure how, maybe by installing XP update which increases firewire speed which is reduced by SP2), but noises on windows minimization remain.

Your info concerned me a bit, if the same chipset is responsible for cardbus, then maybe using a Cardbus firewire adapter won't change much? But maybe Cardbus chipset doesn't do as much processing as firewire chipset, and using more effective FW chipset will do. I will have to try/

Thanks,
Am

PS.
MS Patch, for all firewire users:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222/en-us