express slot to pci-e adapter

[Obin Olson]

PCIE2EXP

http://www.getcatalyst.com/adapter_m..._pcie2exp.html

anyone know if you can use the AJA cards with this on a dell laptop? man would that be great if it worked..

[Salah Baker]

Looks shady at best...but would be cool as hell

[David Taylor]

This just became available. I got an email from them but I don't know anything about the product. http://www.magma.com/products/pciexp...ox1/index.html

[Salah Baker]

Magma is a goog company David,
little help would be needed to make BM pcie a viable lappy card

[Richard Leadbetter]

I've been in contact with Magma for quite some time. I think they've had Intensity working on a Mac using that new set-up but I have no word on PC. Don't see why it wouldn't work though.

One thing to point out though is that there is a lot of technical trickery going on in the background, and some machines work better than others. Magma recommend high-end Sony laptops and have had bad performance issues with Dell, for example. They have a driver for problematic machines that improves performance, but they still warned me off using a Dell at all for video work.

It's also worth pointing out that their previous PCI to ExpressCard adaptor isn't quite as fantastic as their website says it is. It works absolutely fine with my Firewire card, but bluescreened with my Sweetspot SD component capture card, and anything that uses a VFW driver as opposed to a DirectShow/WDM driver won't work at all.

With regards using an AJA Xena card - well, in theory the bandwidth is there but it is a x4 card if memory serves and ExpressCard only has x1 bandwidth.

[Tim Veal]

Here's the email I recieved about their expressbox. Haven't had a chance yet to call them direct and ask about it.

"Hello Tim-

Thank you for your inquiry. Both the AJA and Decklink cards have been tested with the ExpressBox1 and both cards are compatible.

We have (2) enclosure options available depending on the length of the PCIe card:

EB1H – ExpressCard to PCI Express (fits a PCIe card shorter than 6.604”) – Price: $729.00.

EB1F – ExpressCard to PCI Express (fits a PCIe card longer than 6.604”) – Price: $749.00.

Current Lead-Time: 2-5 business days after the receipt of the order.

Our PCI expansion products are sold with:
· 30 day money back guarantee
· 1 year return to factory warranty


If you should have any questions please feel free to contact me directly at 858-530-2511 ext: 2200 or via email at jkohlhorst@magma.com.

I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.


Best regards-
Jill Kohlhorst
Account Executive
MAGMA
A Disabled Veteran Company

9918 Via Pasar
San Diego, CA 92126
www.magma.com
w: 858.530.2511 x2200
fax: 858.530.2733
jkohlhorst@magma.com"

[Richard Leadbetter]

It's a serious amount of money and I would be emailing asking for clarification about compatibility with the specific notebook you intend to use the interface with.

The plain and simple fact is that the ExpressCard port is rarely used in this manner, so there are cases where a specific notebook's BIOS doesn't support it. In the case of my Dell M1210 for example, the ExpressCard to PCI expansion actually crashes the computer if it is inserted on start-up. You need to boot without the card inserted, hot-plug it in later and let the Magma driver take over. Far less trickery is involved with an ExpressCard to PCIe interface, but performance will still change significantly from one notebook to the next.

It is against this forum's rules to post emails, but Magma's engineer strongly recommends HP and Sony platforms and mentions latency issues with Dell machines to the point where he says that with applications that use a high interrupt frequency he "would definitely steer clear". I am assuming that a bandwidth-saturating task such as HD ingest would definitely be such a case.

[David Taylor]

Also, we haven't characterized mobile chipsets in terms of CPU horsepower for RT ingest of HD-SDI. I *think* you'll probably be okay using the fastest Merom processor - 2.33GHz and at least 1GB of fast memory. - but it'll be close. Both memory slots need to be populated.

[Giroud Francois]

for 729$ you could build a barebone pc from an asus box.
Just add a handle at top of the box

[Richard Leadbetter]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

Also, we haven't characterized mobile chipsets in terms of CPU horsepower for RT ingest of HD-SDI. I *think* you'll probably be okay using the fastest Merom processor - 2.33GHz and at least 1GB of fast memory. - but it'll be close. Both memory slots need to be populated.

It may be worthwhile waiting for the new Santa Rosa Intel chipset being deployed into the next generation of notebooks. The top-end X7800 will be a 2.6GHz CPU with an 800MHz front side bus. It will also be multiplier unlocked so I would imagine some top-end notebooks will be able to overclock it in their BIOS (similar to how the current T7600G in the Dell XPS M1710 can be BIOS overclocked to 3GHz).

Santa Rosa is essentially identical to the current Core 2 chipset, the difference being a new socket type and a boost in front side bus frequency to 800MHz - another factor that will help CineForm performance.

[David Taylor]

Agreed - we would expect good performance increase with Santa Rosa at 2.6GHz+ and 800 MHz FSB.

[Tim Veal]

Also, all the laptops I've seen with an expresscard come with Vista, which no one is supporting at the moment.

[Don Blish]

Originally Posted by Obin Olson

PCIE2EXP

http://www.getcatalyst.com/adapter_m..._pcie2exp.html

anyone know if you can use the AJA cards with this on a dell laptop? man would that be great if it worked..

There is a good chance this would work. ExpressCard is just another expression of PCIe, both are serial bus (one twised pair for in, one for out).

[Serge Victorovich]

Originally Posted by Richard Leadbetter

It may be worthwhile waiting for the new Santa Rosa Intel chipset being deployed into the next generation of notebooks. The top-end X7800 will be a 2.6GHz CPU with an 800MHz front side bus. It will also be multiplier unlocked so I would imagine some top-end notebooks will be able to overclock it in their BIOS (similar to how the current T7600G in the Dell XPS M1710 can be BIOS overclocked to 3GHz).

Santa Rosa is essentially identical to the current Core 2 chipset, the difference being a new socket type and a boost in front side bus frequency to 800MHz - another factor that will help CineForm performance.

Richard, you mean mobo like this based on intel Q965 Express chipsethttp://www.epiacenter.com/modules.ph...ticle&sid=1064 ?

[Richard Leadbetter]

No, Santa Rosa is the new chipset being used that will replace the current mobile Core 2 configuration. It'll be in laptops etc.

What you have there looks like a Mini-ITX board that will run with desktop Core 2 CPUs. That would be a great board to experiment with but unfortunately it has no PCI Express capabilities.