Hi all! After some tinkering with the drivers, I've done unthinkable :-) -- the cardbus now works flawlessly in Windoze (for Linux read below). What I basically did is investigated the current driver in Windoze for the carbus and it came up as a "generic cardbus interface." I was by now aware that the exact cardbus chipset is/was ENE C1410. So I did some searching on the Google for the driver and came up with HP's driver download page for one of their laptops (mine is eMachines m6807). So, I said what the heck, at this point I just might as well go ahead and try it. So I downloaded the driver (link: http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqnk/us/download/18388.html) installed it, it went without a hitch and asked me to reboot. Upon rebooting the device manager listed the pcmcia interface as the "ENE C1410 Cardbus Interface." So far, so good! Upon reconnecting the RME HDSP and playing the sound, the sound was absolutely flawless at 3ms latency!!! Yay! Now, I need to do more testing to see exactly what are the real limits of the cardbus, but as of right now, everything seems to be working fine. This laptop is a real gem after all (for $1400 is simply unbeatable, especially considering that the voodoopc sells the exact same chasis with a bit faster processor for $3200!). However, there is one aspect that is yet to be resolved, and that is Linux + cardbus issue. With the hardware concerns now being out of the way (obviously driver upgrade in Windoze has proven that it was software-based), this leads me to believe that the Linux kernel's yenta_socket module that is currently being used for this particular ENE C1410 cardbus is apparently not quite compatible with it. Hence, whoever has any access to the kernel/pcmcia module developers/maintainers, I would greatly appreciate it if you could please forward this info to them, as it may prove to be valuable. Anyhow, I guess this time around the story has a happy ending after all. Many thanks to everyone for your assistance in this matter! At least in Linux it is simply a matter of time until the drivers are properly tweaked (unless ACPI/APIC has also something to do with it). Best wishes, Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/
