POS EMU0404USB POS DELL POS 64bit ATT RANT

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Please note the following is completely unconstructive and a pure rant against both hardware and software makers. Do not read if you have anything remotely worthwhile to do :)

Some time ago i bought an EMUo4o4 USB mostly for measurements. It worked ok in XP and was nearly usable in 32bit 7. Having recently upgraded the laptop to a Dell XPS L502X i approached the issue of installing the EMU with a degree of trepidation. The Dell may not have been my wisest choice either as it only works with custom drivers for 64bit 7. No other OSs seem supported at all. Luckily, Creative have released a beta 64bit driver which seems to work on most systems. My Dell is not one of those. Neither the beta, nor the Vista 64 drivers like the Renesas USB3 port on the Dell. Both lock the OS to a hardware reset.

Of course i had to waste some more time and attempt a flash USB winXP boot. Don't know what i was thinking at the time... without Xp usb drivers. And virtual PC Xp mode.

In short, the EMU just cannot be made to work with this particular laptop, no matter what (or i am an idiot). The fact that Creative have released a Beta (!!!) driver for 64bit 7 by the end of 2010 and nothing since is also not so impressive. Can it be so hard to produce a working driver???
 
My last attempt will be Ubuntu. It seems both USB 3 drivers for Dell and working drivers for EMU are available. The EMU represents a tiny monetary value compared to the time i've already wasted. Just hate throwing things or admitting defeat. Hopefully there was a lesson somewhere in this, just not sure what.
 
Sadly E-MU seem to have discontinued the 0404-USB. I also use one for amplifier and loudspeaker measurements, first using XP and now (with the beta drivers) on Win7 32-bit. The beta drivers work well for me on both my Sony Vaio laptops.

Creative are just as disgraceful as M-audio in terms of getting updated drivers out for their products. It can't do much for customer relations.
 
My last attempt will be Ubuntu. It seems both USB 3 drivers for Dell and working drivers for EMU are available. The EMU represents a tiny monetary value compared to the time i've already wasted. Just hate throwing things or admitting defeat. Hopefully there was a lesson somewhere in this, just not sure what.

The lesson is simple - buying hardware for which documentation and thus fully working open source drivers exist. They may not be available for closed-source OSes (but often are too), but at least there is some option to go (open source OS). Unfortunately there are areas where this is not possible (e.g. graphical cards for which 100% complete open source drivers do not exist yet - AMD publicly documented GPUs vs. NVidia never releasing any specs but playing rather fair with its constantly updated closed-source drivers).

AFAIK, E-MU provided some documentation under NDA to one of linux alsa developers. Unfortunately the drivers are not complete. Perhaps the implemented features will suffice for your intended usage scenario.
 
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I've got an old laptop (don't remember the brand off hand) that is running 7. The E-MU404 seemed to load properly, but when I tried to access it from "AudioTester" it would crash.

At my son's suggestion, I unplugged the E0MU404, rebooted the system, started AudioTester, and then plugged in the E-MU404 to the USB port. AudioTester works fine now.

Strange.
 
Did you try the Vista x64 drivers? Creative Worldwide Support

But, yes Creative takes their sweet time releasing new drivers. And products are dropped from support with no second thoughts.
Maybe you can partition the Dell and try to install in the new partition the XP. In BIOS you should have some ATA "compatibility" mode for the HDD (to present SATA as PATA to the XP installer).
 
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Ha. I just went through the same thing this weekend. I normally use a delta 1010 card, but wanted to grab something from a cassette in the other rom. Pulled out the old EMU0404 USB (White) and found that it only works for a few seconds at a time on my newer Dell laptop w/ win 64. Doesn't seem like the 0404 is that old, but I guess support is gone... just like my old XP laptop that had the working driver set.
 
Sorry to hear about our woes. Looks like the EMU0404 doesn't like your USB 3.0 port/driver. I installed a friend's EMU0404 on a laptop running Win 7 64 bit couple of hours back without any hiccups. I checked the notebook on the Dell site - doesn't seem to have a standard USB 2.0 port either. Can you check for a different version of your USB 3.0 driver?
 
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