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mritunjay
Posts: 23
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 Posted - Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:23 pm
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Sometimes while using more than 8 tracks for recording, the PC hangs (often) and while playing back dropouts are there (sometimes only). Sometimes the standard message by Windows appears "This program has....." and then windows crashes. I have P-IV (1.7 GHz), 256 Mb RAM PC. What precaution should I take to avoid these obstecles?
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Cube
Posts: 29
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Posted - Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:57 pm
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I dont have an answer , but I have a question :
what OS are You running ?
There is some useful info on the net You may want to take a look at regardless :
http://www.bluelifeaudio.com/~pcconfig/
All the best
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mritunjay
Posts: 23
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 12:35 am
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Sorry for posting incomplete information. i am using windows98 SE.
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teflon20
Location: Australia
Posts: 474
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 12:46 am
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| Sometimes while using more than 8 tracks for recording, the PC hangs (often) and while playing back dropouts are there (sometimes only). Sometimes the standard message by Windows appears "This program has....." and then windows crashes. I have P-IV (1.7 GHz), 256 Mb RAM PC. What precaution should I take to avoid these obstecles? |
I suggest increasing your system ram and, maybe just maybe you might generally need more powerful hardware. Or try increasing wave cache or buffer size in CEP.
Best of luck.
Bye.
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Cube
Posts: 29
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 1:26 am
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I hope You're joking , teflon20 ))
You're not gonna tell the guy that (just maybe) P-IV 1.7GHz , 256Mb RAM is not powerful enough to run 8+ tracks of audio , are You ? Pentium II - 300 with 64Mb of RAM should do it on properly configured PC...unless there is a lot of DX staff running in real - time..
***********************************************.
mritunjay , please let me know if the link above did (or didnt) help.
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teflon20
Location: Australia
Posts: 474
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 1:56 am
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I hope You're joking , teflon20 ))
You're not gonna tell the guy that (just maybe) P-IV 1.7GHz , 256Mb RAM is not powerful enough to run 8+ tracks of audio , are You ? Pentium II - 300 with 64Mb of RAM should do it on properly configured PC...unless there is a lot of DX staff running in real - time..
***********************************************.
mritunjay , please let me know if the link above did (or didnt) help.
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Well maybe there's a bottleneck in his system somewhere, maybe he should set the latency timer for his soundcard higher and set the latency timer for his video card lower with tweakbios or something. Just a thought.
Excuse if I was misleading, but I haven't experienced how powerful the latest computer's really are. I'm just stuck with a P200MMX. And it's not very pleasant to work with.
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jonrose
Location: USA
Posts: 2901
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 7:46 pm
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Well, just for a bit of perspective, I used to use Cool Edit version 1 on an old Pentium running at 166MHz - and that only had a 33Mhz bus...
With the quickest IDE drives available at the time (of course they don't hold a candle to our latest options!), we used to record with all ten inputs on a Layla 20 card simlutaneously (eight analog inputs and the stereo S/PDIF pair) while playing back at least a couple of tracks for cue mixes. It didn't burp. That was also on Windoze98.
It's hard to judge things like this from only a system's speed in order to determine just how much hard disk I/O you can accomplish - It's just one of those "optimize-the-system-and-try-it" sort of things.
All the best... -Jon
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jonrose
Location: USA
Posts: 2901
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 7:47 pm
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I was just reminded by a friend that the same old P-166 machine is still doing duty running Quickbooks in his front office...
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teflon20
Location: Australia
Posts: 474
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 8:40 pm
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Well, just for a bit of perspective, I used to use Cool Edit version 1 on an old Pentium running at 166MHz - and that only had a 33Mhz bus...
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Hi jonrose. I don't intend to correct you but do you mean a 33mhz PCI bus and not 33Mhz FSB. Otherwise the system would be worthless. A P166 can run on 66MHZ or 83Mhz FSB.
Just a note, the PCI bus still runs at 33mhz unless ofcourse you are using a non standard overclocked speed. Even an 100Mhz FSB uses 33Mhz PCI bus.
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jonrose
Location: USA
Posts: 2901
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Posted - Fri Sep 06, 2002 10:11 pm
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Ah. Good catch.
Yes, I meant the PCI... FSB was 66Mhz.
Whee! Flying, eh?
Heh-heh...
:D
Best.. -Jon
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mritunjay
Posts: 23
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Posted - Sat Sep 07, 2002 12:58 pm
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Thanks you all for the suggestions. I am going to increase RAM to 1GB. There must be something wrong with the hardware and I have requested my vender to come and find out any hardware problem. I shall post the results as soon as it is done. Thanks a lot.
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VoodooRadio
Location: USA
Posts: 3971
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Posted - Sat Sep 07, 2002 4:26 pm
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Hey Mritunjay,
Before throwing your money don't on 1 gig of RAM, you need to ensure that 98se will recognize and use it. I seem to remember (from somewhere) that 98 won't use anything above 512 meg. Maybe I heard/read it wrong, but it sure would be a waste of $$$ to buy it and find that you can't use it. Have you gone through the "Tips and Optimization" suggestions? I honestly don't think your 256 meg of RAM is your problem. Send an email to Syntrillium Support and let them help you out. Good Luck Voodoo
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Voodoo
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Cube
Posts: 29
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Posted - Sat Sep 07, 2002 5:10 pm
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Vodoo is absolutely correct. Win98 will not work properly with RAM over 512Mb. A very good point indeed ! )
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SteveG
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6695
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Posted - Sun Sep 08, 2002 4:48 pm
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I haven't actually tried this, but according to Microshaft's knowledge base, the situation with Win98 is as follows: Your system is very likely to crash if you actually install more than 1Gbyte of RAM, but it is actually possible to install and run up to 1Gbyte by making a few alterations to the System.ini file. I'm assuming that this is okay, because they actually quote numbers up to 1Gbyte.
You need to add or change the following:
In the [386Enh] section, the MaxPhysPage= entry should have a value of 40000
In the [Vcache] section, you don't want to specify that all of the RAM is available, and it is suggested that 512Mbytes is the max that it makes sense to use (although what MS says doesn't entirely add up, IMHO). The two entries here should both have the same number in (in kbytes)
MinFileCache=512288
MaxFileCache=512288
Personally, I've not experienced any major advantage from having such a large Vcache, and I would have thought that half of the above numbers was more than adequate!
So although we keep saying that Win98 can't use more than 1/2 Gbyte of RAM, this isn't quite what MS says! Has anybody actually had any experience of doing this? I 'only' have 512Mbytes in the audio machine, and so, as I mentioned before, I haven't actually tried this. If you do a search around the MS knowledge base, you can find all the info relating to this just by using the term 'RAM' in their search engine, and specifying Win98.
Steve
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mjb
Posts: 167
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 5:32 am
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| So although we keep saying that Win98 can't use more than 1/2 Gbyte of RAM, this isn't quite what MS says! Has anybody actually had any experience of doing this? I 'only' have 512Mbytes in the audio machine, and so, as I mentioned before, I haven't actually tried this. |
I just upgraded from 128 x 1 DIMM to 128+256+256 = 640M. I didn't tweak anything at all, and it seems to work fine. The spare memory is consumed by disk cache in very short order if I start moving files around. The reason for the 3 DIMMS is I was expecting to have to out the 128M one if it wouldn't sit with the others, but it did, so in the absence of anywhere better to stick it ...
The few glitches, dropouts and hangs have gone away since doing this.
I may investigate changing the settings as detailed above ...
Mike.
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SteveG
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6695
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 6:55 am
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It's probably worth checking out the Microshaft site before doing any changes, as they have different figures for the MaxPhysPage entry according to the amopunt of RAM you've actually got. I have no idea whether it makes any difference having too high a figure in, but they do have a table of values...
Steve
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mritunjay
Posts: 23
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 9:52 am
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Dear SteveG,
Many thanks for the suggestions. I shall to locate all the useful information from MS. I shall experiment with varying amounts of RAM and post my results. It may take some days. My vender is a nice man and I can make use of extra RAM for exp. without any payment.
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Cube
Posts: 29
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 1:56 pm
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Hmmmm My Win 98 did not work with 576MB ram...Got me ))
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VoodooRadio
Location: USA
Posts: 3971
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 2:18 pm
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I knew that I had read about 98 not utilizing anything above 512 meg somewhere, so today I phoned my Computer "Go To" guy and inquired..... Just because you stick it in a SIM slot and it is recognized, does not mean that Windows is making good (if any) use. At least that's what I was told, when I put my recording system together. My "go to" guy is an I.T. man at NASA's Johnson Space Center none the less, so I tend to go with what he tells me. Good Luck Voodoo
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Voodoo
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SteveG
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6695
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VoodooRadio
Location: USA
Posts: 3971
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 5:23 pm
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"Symptoms
If your computer has 1 gigabyte (GB) or more of random access memory (RAM) with shared video memory, the computer may boot to a blue screen error when you try to start Windows Millennium Edition (Me) or Windows 98.
Cause
Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle 1 GB or more of RAM. 1 GB or more of RAM can lead to potential system instability.
Resolution
To work around this problem, reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 megabytes (MB) or less."
Well, I'm sure confused here...... it starts by saying 1 GB "may boot to BSOD and then continues to say "if it's a problem, reduce back to 512". The confusion for me is.... why, if the system "supposedly/maybe" will work with 1 GB, would cutting it in half solve the problem? Why not cutting it back by 64, 128 or 256 meg? Oh well.... I'm running 512 and haven't seen any problems so.... "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Thanks for the legwork SteveG (it is very interesting). Good Luck Voodoo
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Voodoo
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SteveG
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6695
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Posted - Mon Sep 09, 2002 5:48 pm
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Well I get the impression that if you are a) lucky and b) really careful with the way you set the machine up, you can run Win98 with 1Gbyte RAM, but that it will be happier with just a little less - hence all of the numbers in that table. But I'd agree that the wording does allow for some ambiguity here. I suppose that we could ask MS to clarify this, but somehow I think that it might take a long time to get an answer, if at all...
Steve
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Dropouts, windows crashing etc. while recording or