[LAU] Solved: Firewire on current laptop

[Bill Gribble]

Hey, I had been keeping around an oooold Dell laptop just because it had an Expresscard slot that I could use to talk to my FireWire audio interface.  I was considering jumping ship to a new usb interface since I haven’t been able to find a smaller sized laptop with any FW or expresscard interface. 

But I saw some mentions that maybe a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port, which is available on more laptops these days including my HP, might work. 

Following the trail I tried out a frankencable approach:  Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, connected to Apple Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire adapter, connected to a FireWire cable with the right ends to plug into the Apple device and my FireWire device. 

It works! The only tricky bit is to make sure udev knows to allow hotplugged devices on the Thunderbolt port, which it doesn’t by default.  That done, my interface appears to Jack as an ordinary FireWire device. 

 If I was traveling with it I might encase the first 12 inches in heatshrink tubing or duct tape or something, but for now I am just glad not to have to give up my firewire mixer which I am sort of attached to.

Thanks,
Bill Gribble