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clothesburner · Location: USA

Win XP with SP1 (installed as ACPI computer)

Gigabyte 8IK1100

When I go into the bios, I'm given the option to manually assign whichever PCI slot to whichever IRQ setting, however, once I click back over to Windows, nothing has changed. Any ideas?

I'm about to call Gigabyte but before I did I wanted to post here and see what this group of people could do with it. Thanks.

motorhead6 · Posted - Wed Aug 06, 2003 12:39 am

I wish I knew.

ozpeter · Location: Australia

I think this is the subject of a current thread on, er, another forum where someone asked the difference between Win2000 and XP, and MusicConductor dealt with this issue (and mentioned your name!).

- Ozpeter

Edit - actually it's here on 'Windows XP vs Windows 2000' - but maybe that thread was the inspiration for your question?

MusicConductor · Location: USA

The main deal, to expand what I briefly mentioned on the other thread, is that I had a nightmare nearly of Clothesburner's proportions trying to install an M-Audio Delta series card in a Dell computer. That computer literally seemed to eat them (an inference that their tech support department affirmed) so that the internal clocking got fried. In the process of eliminating all variables, M-Audio's tech staff had us run through quite a few hoops to eliminate all other possibilities. One of them was to disaple ACPI. I couldn't go to standard PC mode without losing dual-processor support, so we re-did the OS as "MPC Multiprocessor PC." Disabling ACPI is possible by going into your control panel/system/computer or some such path (sorry, I'm not at the office right now) and hitting the "change" button. Reinstalling the OS is probably more safe.

By the way, I had to manually power down after shutting down the computer while in this mode.

Once the Delta card clearly wouldn't reside happily in the Dell PC, we just stuck a Santa Cruz in its place and I resigned myself to do transfers and tracking on a different machine in a less convenient location. Then when an OS re-install became necessary, I got ACPI back. Audio performance has worked just fine.

If you need to know more of the exact steps to eliminating ACPI, I'll try to come up with that later. However, it was M-Audio tech support that got me going on it.

clothesburner · Location: USA

Music Conductor, my computer seemed to eat my sound cards, too. So long as I was only using one of my Delta 66s along with my 1010, everything was fine, but you let me throw in that other 66 and it was the Godzilla - King Kong flick of a lifetime. For instance, and I'll be quick, 1010 = PCI Slot 2, 66 #1 = PCI Slot 3, 66 #2 = PCI Slot 4. Monitoring through the 66 in PCI slot 4 (Delta 66 #2) the signal sounded metallic. I took Delta 66 #2 out of slot 4 and put it in slot 3, and the Delta 66 that was in slot 3 (Delta 66 #1) and put it in 4, now Delta 66 #1 was screwed up/thought it was slot 4 that was screwed up until the problem crossed over to my new machine. Needless to say, M-audio is testing the cards right now as we speak. I'll post the results - it's got to be the cards!

clothesburner · Location: USA

Oh, one more thing. To cure the IRQ issue, I reinstalled Windows as Standard PC and have had absolutely no problems. And as I've said, I've only got my 1010 right now and am thinking about just staying with that. It feels nice just having one card and a computer that works..... God, it's been a long time.

MusicConductor · Location: USA

I still can't believe all the garbage you've been through to have a stable system! And if everything is behaving right now, I'd be tempted to leave the other cards out also.

M-Audio had me return cards to them when damage seemed likely to them. That yours is also a Delta series card makes for a distasteful deja vu. One clarification: once that card was in my machine for more than about 60 seconds, it was unable to clock to an external TDIF source forever in this computer or another. Permanent destruction!

So: what is the MOBO on that machine? Mine is Dell-branded.

clothesburner · Location: USA

The motherboard on that machine was an Asus A7A 266. The motherboard on the new is a Gigabyte 8IK1100. For the simple fact the problem carried over to the new machine, I'm almost 100% certain something was wrong with the cards. Another indicator of that is it didn't matter which OS I was using or recording software (the problem existed in Samplitude as well). What I'm hoping is that they swap out one of the cards but, we'll see. Can you explain this:

"Once that card was in my machine for more than about 60 seconds, it was unable to clock to an external TDIF source forever in this computer or another. Permanent destruction!"

William Rose · Location: USA

Hey Clothesburner,

Not to say I told you so, but I think I suggested that you strip down to one card a while ago. Then, to add the others one by one until problems arose........I've never heard of 3 soundcards in one pc before........2 maybe, but not three. And it all goes hand in hand with some pretty basic rules of thumb when you build a system, DAW or not. Throwing a pile of hardware in a box and then trying to make it all fit is simply......a long shot. A largely unnecessary nightmare to boot. Windows is going to give you enough problems just getting your basics running the way you want them to, and you're always going to have to do some juggling and squeezing to get anything else to fall in line.

As for the IRQ thing.

I might be wrong here, but I thought that by manually assigning IRQ's to slots through the BIOS, you were in effect setting priority. So the only way to get Windows to adhere to your chosen settings would be to do a fresh install of Windows. You can't just expect to re-assign IRQ's in the BIOS, restart, and have Windows move everything around. But I've never actually done this, so like I said, I could be wrong. Big Grin

MusicConductor · Location: USA

Hmmmm... William may be right about so many cards, although some M-Audio cards are supposed to be happy in groups of up to four in the same machine. What's different here is that they're not multiple installations of the same card. Some M-Audio drivers work across several cards in the same series, and at the very least Clothesburner ought to get those to behave together.

I'll try to make some sense of this:
"Once that card was in my machine for more than about 60 seconds, it was unable to clock to an external TDIF source forever in this computer or another. Permanent destruction!"

Please understand, first of all, that "permanent destruction" does not apply to the whole of the card. The internal clock and most of its functions remained normal; the issue always was whether or not the card could clock correctly to an incoming TDIF signal. Once it was put in this Dell, TDIF was never glitch-free again (and at worst got pretty horrendous).

I went through about 4 of the type of card in question. The first ended up being a simple replacement under the premise that nothing would make it work in the Dell computer, so it was exchanged. I put the second one in the Dell computer, and all the same problems occurred. That got our suspicions going! The next card went into 3 computers, if I remember correctly -- and the Dell was the last one. Everything went fine on the other machine(s). Once it was installed on the Dell, it wouldn't work on any machine. The final card has been permanently installed in a generic machine with an Intel Mobo and has served us quite well, and we'll never put it in a Dell again! Unfortunately, that means I have to use a separate computer in a separate room to transfer 8 channels of TDIF into Cool Edit, instead of doing it at my desktop workstation.

MusicConductor · Location: USA

By the way, that was pretty impressive and generous customer support from M-Audio to be so thorough with my situation. Hopefully yours won't be such a long, tedious, and costly process.

clothesburner · Location: USA

William, I've heard of people having three 1010s in one machine - that's 24 ins and outs! I'm dead set on 16 and, ultimately, if I can't get it with M-audio, I'll move on. But I feel pretty certain I can get it with M-audio. Those guys have already said that if they determine anything whatsoever is wrong with the card (or cards) they'll replace it so... I've actually had these cards all up and running before on one machine. As a mat-o-fact, I once upon a time recorded 14 inputs at once at 32 bit/48,000 htz so... but yeah, in this instance, so long as I was only running one 66 alongside the 1010, everthing was cool. Add the other.... run to the Syntrillium forum with my tail between my legs boo hooing my eyes out. If I've not already mentioned this, I think another indicator that something was wrong with one of the cards is the fact that CEP 2.1, when there were two 66s in the machine at once, would always kick the inputs of one of them to the "Do Not Use" box. I'd configure, re-configure... the only way it would eventually allow me to access the inputs of the card "it didn't like" was for me to put them at the bottom of the list. In other words, Delta 66 1/2, 3/4, Delta 1010 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, Delta 66 #2 1/2, 3/4, but even then, one wouldn't playback correctly..... okay, I'm rambling now. I guess the last and final thing to say on this matter is that the specs of my new machine are more than capable of handling three soundcards and that I'll keep you posted. Thanks for your replies.

VoodooRadio · Location: USA

I've seen 3 cards in 1 computer several times and although it's a bit nightmarish to me.... it works flawlessly! Wink

jonrose · Location: USA

I've had four Laylas in one box for ensemble-based overdubs.
Echo's drivers were just fine.

At the time, we needed about 38 different cues mixes, you see...
Wink

Big project.

Best... -Jon

clothesburner · Location: USA

Let my cards come back from the factory f'ed up and I'm gonna have me four Laylas in one box! Big Grin

MusicConductor · Location: USA

Fair 'nuff. It's about time this gentlemen had a relationship with a computer that wasn't adversarial!