I bought a Texas Instrument 1394 PCI card for my mixer and will see how this runs on my current system. Most firewire mixer manufacturers recommended the TI firewire controller. From what I've read, it seems like theres allot of uncertainty in the hardware market right now and prices will be dropping soon. I'll buy a new rig then and have more MB choices than ASUS (which I think are great) and GIgabyte who are black listed.
A good example of the prices starting to drop is this Q6700 and EVGA 780SLI Combo for $499 at TD (
TigerDirect.ca )
Thanks again for the help.