PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I've been in the exact lab room where USB was originally invented up in Hillsboro, OR.
Literally hundreds of thousands of $ spent on a double-walled, EMI-shielded, secured, key entry room...

...which they are now using for storage.

Kinda shows you what Intel thinks of USB - it's a means of selling computers which have THEIR CPUs IN THEM. They subsidized wireless at a LOSS just to help push the sale of laptops WHICH HAVE THEIR CPUs IN THEM.

Crazy company.

Greg

I think USB sucks for pro audio with multiple tracks but USB 3.0 will be very different.

Neutron wrote:the good news is that nvidia is getting out of the chipset business so apple will have to do their cost cutting somewhere else.

So there's still hope! Well, kind of... Let's see how it goes. First they'll have to flush out these defective chips by selling thousands of laptops...

garyb wrote:and the ladies line up for kisses...

... except with those LCD glasses, he might think Modular III is kissing him

Seriously, though, do they make wireless LCD goggles already? My dentist had a pair of those, but they needed big thick cables. Was a while ago, too...

braincell wrote:I think USB sucks for pro audio with multiple tracks but USB 3.0 will be very different.

The race is on between USB3.0, and HDMI, and a couple newer custom protocols.
Superspeed USB is still expensive I think, since it's a hybrid fiber/copper with RX/TX, and companies (like Nvidia, Broadcom, etc.) have to develop controller chipsets for it.

We'll see...

Greg

Although I suppose it could be a failing in the newer Nvidia chipset, the older Macbook Pros that work fine also have an nvidia chipset (one that is subject to potential solder point failures in the chipset itself unfortunately.) I think they've chosen a cheaper expresscard solution this time, and there's a lot of discussion about that elsewhere online. The threads that pop up on the apple support forums disappear in short order so it's hard to find information, but feel free to peruse the MacBook Pro owner reports on Express34 Cards for plenty of anecdotal reports.

I've been trying to discern if the newer 17" MBP's had a different chipset, or if this is somehow related to the cut-down power supply in the newer unibody 15" MBP's....

Is there anything that prevents you guys from testing XITE-1 on a laptop? there is something I probably don't get...

I think there are several people using Xite, I'm not sure about what the host PC is though. I wasn't under the impression though that the last bits of the discussion were Xite focused, since it's not currently running on OSX. I'm pretty sure there are windows notebooks with working expresscard slots, unless things have recently changed there as well.

Oh, I see that this only concerns USB MAC? anyway, I checked back an email from SC and apparently it needs a cable and the card that'll go into the express card slot... ain't these available on the market though? or SC has to build them?
hum, i'll go back to hibernation for another 6 months before looking at it again

They require special titanium alloy cable created in a gravity free enviroment, as in the shuttle. Trouble is getting the right slot in the Space Shuttle.
I believe it's Justin Timberlake, and S|C gets the next slot.

wrong.
Nasa used off-the-shelf acme parts to build all of its shuttle components. ask Will the coyote, he'll tell ya

Gordon, as far as users are concerned, we cannot try XITE on a laptop, because the EC cards haven't been released or provided to us (I'd be most willing to help in the testing). We only have the PCIe card, for desktops.

I also thought this problem would be contained to the latest Macbook Pros, but this thread actually pointed out that it may be a more widespread issue, and not at all related to OSX / Vista / W7, etc. Just as Firewire ports are being dropped from the latest Mobos, the same could happen to EC if it proves to be substandard in performance - and that would be a setback for future laptop usage of the XITE.

Valis: Thanks for the link, it seems to be mostly about eSATA, but I guess it translates to other high-bandwidth peripherals. Funny how some people have found out that using cheap EC adapters (under 20 USD) works better than the most expensive ones. Maybe a hint to S|C if they decide to go ahead with it.

actually, the NAMM machine had some off-the-shelf parts(cable, card, multipin adaptors) cobbled together. a user who was knowledgable could connect right up as far as i can see. S/C is going to produce a custom cable and connector that will optimize performance is my understanding....if the ports on the laptops are not really fully functional, i imagine that the kabosh is on the idea....

If RME can do it, then S/C can do it.

It can work. Worst case is we cobble adapters together .

...the 'mother of invention' and all...

Greg

This is impending doom.

braincell wrote:This is impending doom.

I disagree... EC interface is not out yet, so S|C can still choose to develop a different protocol for the XITE if it all goes down. I do hope we won't have to put pieces together, as much as I love to tinker with electronics.

If all fails, the solution will be a Mini-ITX board with PCIe on a small rackmount case. For specific tasks, live or remote, one can have 12v AC power for the computer and XITE, and even a small LCD monitor, and for studio operation, it won't make much difference. I know it's not the same, and somewhat disappointing, but this really isn't S|C's fault (although they should probably stop advertising the EC connection if they know it won't work- and maybe have a sincere word with the people who already bought the XITE, even if they're not on the VIP list).

It's still too early, and they're on it. Looks gloomy, but certainly not doomy... Besides, anyone who splashed out the money for the XITE did so at their own risk. It represents a considerable measure of trust in the company, and they shouldn't take that lightly.

Tau wrote:Valis: Thanks for the link, it seems to be mostly about eSATA, but I guess it translates to other high-bandwidth peripherals. Funny how some people have found out that using cheap EC adapters (under 20 USD) works better than the most expensive ones. Maybe a hint to S|C if they decide to go ahead with it.

A lot of those reports come down to how good the drivers are for specific hardware, but there is also info in there showing which cards work on older unibody Macbook Pros (early & late 2008 models0 and yet still completely fail on newer models. The failures on newer models are causing either corrupt data (as evidenced by HD writes) or complete kernel panics, which again points back to the drivers except that the same hardware is stable on older MBP's. So the culprit seems to either be in the chipset used for EC (on 2009 MPB's) or perhaps in the way it shares power with the ports nearby (there's evidence that keeping the port next to it unused improves stability?)

Overall it seems rather daft for Apple to (again) be having these kind of quality control issues for such a premium priced product.

UAD is going to buy S|C, use the remaing chips for MiniXite's and buy the EC design to use, and then drop all support for the cards and the XITE series so they can corner the market while liquidating remaining inventory.

DB...

XITE-1/4LIVE wrote:UAD is going to buy S|C, use the remaing chips for MiniXite's and buy the EC design to use, and then drop all support for the cards and the XITE series so they can corner the market while liquidating remaining inventory.

Now THAT's DOOM.

Again - NOT touting my own horn, but for close to 30 years I've seen engineers overcome much more significant hurdles.
If these guys can get 12 DSP's to work, they can get some fargin' interface to work - hell or high-water...
...and perhaps Apple just doesn't know what the F* they're doing...

Greg

Anyhow as for UA's expresscard teething issues, it would be really good to know if this is a widespread issue on more laptops than Apple's alone, but I don't really know where to track that info (hence my comment earlier about it eventually becoming almost musician-lore to "get one with a TI chipset".) And is the failure in the chipset's implementation of PCIe (ATI?Nvidia?Intel?) or the onboard expresscard interface, the power given to it...etc?