Short story, back in the day I lived in band house for 11 years with all instruments mic'd and ready to go 24/7. I can't say enough about how great of an engineering/recording/learning experience it was to have that convenience. It also spoiled the heck out of me even if I was poor the whole time.
Well I don't live in a band house anymore and I'm somewhat tied to my DAW. IE: Very much not worth pulling my FF800 out of the big stationary rack and basically tearing everything down just to go record at my drummer's house only to have to reverse the entire process when I return home. So, I have slowly been dreaming up a solution which I just finished over the weekend, Yay.
FF800, Universal Audio 4-710D, 48pt ProCo Patch bay + Rack:
Added an old laptop I had lying around (and my fader port) and I can now unplug a couple cables and go:
With the FF800 and the 4-710D there are 18 analog inputs with 8 of those being good mic pres; four of those have 4 1176 styled compressors plus a combination of tube and/or ss pres. All the I/0 for the FF is hooked to the patch bay. The 4-710D is word clock sync'd to the FF800 while doing its own A/D conversion which arrives at the FF800 as 8 channels of ADAT. I'm pretty stoked so far from carrying it around the house and testing it.
The only bummer is that I have a much better laptop but it has no firewire. This old 2001 model Compaq has firewire with a TI chipset. Its drawback is not having much memory and a slow disk. However, its only for tracking and usually 4-8 tracks only and zero VST or extras are going to be needed. So far it has been able to do 4 while testing with no problem so I should be able to easily throw it in the car, mic and record drum tracks then drive back home with the goods.