laptop firewire pcmcia support for external sound card please...

hey guys,

this is my first post, but I have been trying to solve my problem for a while and i need some help.. so here goes:

i have a "firewire audiophile" (external soundcard) by m-audio and ibm thinkpad t40. it doesn't have a firewire port, so i bought a pcmcia card (chipset is ohcl i think...). the problem is when i try to play music through the "firewire audiophile" the sound will drop out when the music is playing. now, this problem only happens when the soundcard is really close to the laptop. however, when the laptop is spread away from the soundcard, the music plays just fine through desktop speakers. so i'm thinking the problem is due to the quality of the wire ( i'm using wire m-audio provided in the package), not enough power coming through the pcmcia firewire card, or some electrical interference from the firewire cable, electrical wires, etc when everything is close....

so i've tried to go through the pci bus power management on the thinkpad, and disabling the automatic power management by the computer. i think this will increase power to the cardbus. however, that does not help... so i'm not sure what to do anymore. the biggest concern is that the setup works only when there is sufficient space between the sound card and the laptop. i think it's weird, but i'm limited on desk space sometimes. i'm just really curious as to how to fix this. anybody have any suggestions? do i need a different cardbus? please help.. thanks in advance.

nobody knows?? i was wondering if the quality of the cable matters.. or are there different pcmcia cards i should try out?