WOW - I have just been 2 months of sheer hell with Mackie trying to get this to work with my Fujitsu N Series laptop. (2.8Ghz P4 with HT, 60Gb/512 RAM/Radeon 9000)
Afetr all this time I find out not only will it not ever work due to IRQ conflicts, but MANY if not MOST PC laptops actually will NEVER work with the ONYX firewire.
I have to sell one or the other or build another PC to support the ONYX 1220. The problem is, MACKIE has no idea what motherboardds or chipsets will support their ASIO driver...so there is a GREAT CHANCE you will run into the same problem over and over! They have NO hardware compatability list, whatsoever!
It is strictly hit-or-miss, even by their own techs advice.
the short of buying the ONYX firewire interface is to have a MAC laptop, even though it is freely advertised to work with ALL PCs. They absolutely refuse to release any sort of HCL for PCs, which has to be taken as a VERY BAD SIGN.
The ONYX in reality only works with a very few PCs, and MACKIE will not release which manufacturers these are. On their forums, I have seen that DELL, Toshiba, Fujitsu are qll makers who have hardware that will NEVER work with the ONYX. There are no workarounds, including PCMCIA. Their driver is really, really crappy/unstable is my gut reaction...Mackie blames the laptop makers...I really dont care whose fault it is, I just wish I would have known - BEWARE - check your device manager and see how many devices are on the same IRQ or risk $$$!!
They bury this info VERY DEEP and it is almost impossible to find.