Ed, its not earthshaking if I don't find out. One of those "nice to know" things. Nothing you or others have posted leads to the answer, which apparently is only somewhere deep in Microsoft.
The current driver works perfectly, at least with my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid recording interface, and it led me to wonder if this is actually the legacy driver. I've seen the same question on recording forums.
Fireberd, I saw your post on the Sonar forum. I know exactly what you are talking about.
I have had the Saffire Pro 14 for some time and originally used the older legacy firewire driver.
Some time later Focusrite recommended using the standard windows driver, if I recall correctly.
My memory is fuzzy, but I think I switched from legacy firewire driver to the standard windows driver.
I wish I could be more exact, but at any rate I use the one that was shown above earlier:
MD5: AAB860A5E606B9621E130D8C29D3F305
version: 10.0.15063.0
This one is NOT the former legacy driver which I think was in Win 7.
I think...
Sorry for not really helping.
In my case, both worked fine. I only switched when Focusrite had an update and mentioned something about the driver. It may have been during the Win7->Win8 upgrade timeframe.
Jim, I used the "new" driver in Win 8 for the Saffire Pro40 I had at the time and worked OK. When I installed Win 8 I forgot to change to legacy driver and it worked OK. According to reference docs earlier in this thread the drivers were reduced to one driver in Win 8.1, but no one knows if it was the legacy driver "renamed" or if it was a different driver.
BTW, I don't think the guy on the Sonar forum that is trying to make it work through the Thunderbolt adapters is ever going to get it working.
Jack
I did a search and I think this may be the original legacy driver.
You could download it and see if it is.
I downloaded, but the driver is not easy to extract (like with 7-zip) so I didn't look further:
1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) Drivers Download for Windows 10, 8.1, 7, Vista, XP
I wonder where they got those. The "official" Microsoft driver has a 2006 date (V10).
I don't know, but there are lots of those types of sites that accumulate drivers.
Some of them seem to get them from vendor-supplied software delivered in finished products, like laptops and desktop driver download sites.
I'd be pretty wary of using them without careful scrutiny, but in some cases I found them useful.
Here is the reason for the 2006 date on "official" Microsoft drivers.
Why are all Windows drivers dated June 21, 2006? Don The Old New Thing
I've been jogging my memory and I think I remember the history, but I could be wrong.
Firewire was mostly adopted by video enthusiasts and then later by the audio industry.
There were 2 versions 'a' and 'b' - a = 400 Mbps, b= 800 Mbps.
The legacy driver had something in it for the 'b' version that later drivers lacked.
So there was controversy over chipsets - VIA versus TI or whatever - and they may have used different drivers.
All this is hazy, but I think that eventually Microsoft merged everything together in the Win 7 or 8 driver.
So now that Firewire is 'dead' all the problems should be resolved.
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