And again - PCI capacity limit reached, damn it!

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 3:11 am

I know I have a lame old comp and I'll have the new one sooner or later but now I'd like everything to work fine on the one I have. If possible.
I get subject message every time I run SONAR under Pulsar with any amount of wav and input modules patched in any mixer. Besides, I geat it every time I try to load STS-2000P or STS-5000.
I have VB 601 V motherboard, Celeron 500 MHz, 128 Mb RAM, AGP videocard (Riva TNT 16 Mb). I got PCI latency set at 128 (earlier at 64) in BIOS setup, 16-bit color and hardware acceleration off (tried with max acceleration first).
Pulsar card is installed in 4th (of 5) PCI-slot.

Any suggestions?

Ah, another little thing - I cannot set "allow all bla bla bla" in Windows Pulsar setup - there simply no such options in my XP.

Brain · Post by **Brain** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 3:44 am

If you take a look into the manual, and search for your error message in the troubleshooting section, you find the solution.

Regards

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 4:49 am

Thanks Brain. It was the first thing I did. Manual said "set PCI latency to 64 or higher, set color depth to 16 bit, disable video hardware acceleration, use AGP video card, don't use SCSI". As you see in my initial message, I did it all (though I already had AGP video and no SCSI).
Anything more useful?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Noctulius on 2001-11-20 04:52 ]</font>

Funktastico · Post by **Funktastico** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 5:02 am

This is a very long shot and probably doesn't help but anyway, if these settings can be found in your Bios:

- enable PCI master read caching
- set PCI Arbitration mechanism to PCI (opposed to CPU or normal or whatever)

These two tweaks made the most difference with my setup (Abit kt7).

Toni L.
http://www.mp3.com/NativeAlien

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 5:07 am

Thanks. I'll try it.

kiminet · Post by **kiminet** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 7:04 am

SCSI and probably USB (depending on your motherboard) eats the PCI bandwith and leads to this error.Disable these devises.
I don´t know Sonar, but if you can increase the buffer I think it might help.It helps in Cubase.

Good luck Kim

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Tue Nov 20, 2001 1:36 pm

Join the club.

I don't even have to start a wav editor. Just running the background project, any wave sound by the OS and there it is in all its glory.

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Wed Nov 21, 2001 2:59 am

2 Funktastico:

> - enable PCI master read caching

Done. No effect.

> - set PCI Arbitration mechanism to PCI (opposed to CPU or normal or whatever)

Haven't even found this option...

2 kiminet:

I have no SCSI. And I have USB disabled.

2 Havoc:

Yesterday I have discovered the same. Even trying just to see some MPEG4 movie leads to this message.

Shit..

kimgr · Post by **kimgr** » Wed Nov 21, 2001 12:36 pm

You cannot run Sonar & Pulsar in XP with a 128MB's of ram, and expect any kind of good result.
Besides, In My Very Personal Opion, you can't run Pulsar in XP with the current version.
(Lousy performance, 16bit wavedrivers!!!)

Kim.

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Wed Nov 21, 2001 1:09 pm

Dont forget to turn off buss mastering on your video card if it has the option (even agp ones)

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Thu Nov 22, 2001 2:40 am

2 kimgr:

> You cannot run Sonar & Pulsar in XP with a 128MB's of ram, and expect any kind of good result.

You mean adding more RAM will help reducing this "PCI capacity limit reached" problem?

> Besides, In My Very Personal Opion, you can't run Pulsar in XP with the current version.
> (Lousy performance, 16bit wavedrivers!!!)

Performance and 16 bit are not a real problem for me (this time).

2 defex:

> Dont forget to turn off buss mastering on your video card if it has the option (even agp ones)

Thanks. I'll try this today.

Funktastico · Post by **Funktastico** » Thu Nov 22, 2001 3:26 am

No, adding ram will not increase PCI capacity, but it will greatly increase overall performance.

Brain · Post by **Brain** » Thu Nov 22, 2001 4:26 am

To solve that problem, (I had the same) U need to add in the file CSET.INI and entry like:

[PCI]
maxpcichannel=200

Sorry but I don't remember right the entry because I havent here (I'm at office now) my PC.

I don't remember where I found that solution. In my fist reply I sad in the manual, but I had a look in the PDF manual and there isn't that solution, try to have a look in the paper version manual.
If I remember (when I go home) I'll try to seek where I had found that solution.

Regards

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Thu Nov 22, 2001 5:35 am

2 Brain:

Please look for the correct decision! If it helps, I'll virtually kiss you! Heheh...

As for the paper manual, the only one I have is "Quick Start Guide" which contains only the installation notes and notes on cascading multiple CreamWare boards...

ohmelas · Post by **ohmelas** » Thu Nov 22, 2001 7:55 pm

I totally understand how you feel. It's frustrating and I've experienced it as well. Check out Subhumans windows optimizing tips....

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... 40&forum=3

I did this with my system and although Cakewalk still does this, its not as much. The other aspect to this might be Cakewalk as it relates to Creamware....

Switch the PCI slots your cards are in as well. Your motherboard may be using a bussmaster on that slot for another purpose. This simple fix can solve that problem.

The WDM drivers should someday fix this...when they'll be functional...they're much more efficient than the MME drivers we have to currently use for 16 or 24 tracks. Too bad the programmers are in with Microsoft better than Creamware or both. Might have the best system going.

Otherwise in the meantime, I do like Cakewalk better myself, I jumped ship and bought the $150 comptetitive upgrade to Cubase VST. I've not had a problem since, and although the MIDI stuff is not as cool, in my humble opinion, the audio is worlds better on Cubase.

Hope this helps.

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Fri Nov 23, 2001 2:59 am

Have I forgotten to add that I'm working under Windows XP Pro?

2 Brain:

I haven't even found the file named "cset.ini". It's not anywhere on my harddisk.

2 ohmelas:

That post is about 9x tweaking I guess. Anyway, I've looked through it. No effect...
As for switching PCI slots, I've already tried it. First the card was in 4th slot, then in 5th (the last one) and now it is in the 3rd. All the same crap. I cannot though put it into 2nd or 1st slot since the card is really long and the space is blocked by my hd. But I don't think it would help after all.

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Fri Nov 23, 2001 4:37 am

CSET.INI is in the folder c:Pulsar3Appbin

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Fri Nov 23, 2001 1:40 pm

Sounds like it's time for a new computer, 500mhz Celeron on a via chipset with a 16meg TNT and only 128megs of RAM is nearly the slowest PC that will "work" with Pulsar. You'd actually be fine if you had an Intel 440BX chipset, anything but those old, first generation VIA chipsets, they were the worst to ever hit the market... and FIC is pretty much the cheapest motherboard you can get.

But if you want to ignore my first advice, you should really switch to running Win98SE on that box. Win2k/XP is a little slower, and this will be very noticable on a 500mhz Celeron with soooo little ram. It also takes more PCI, especially if you're running in ACPI mode (which you probably are, if you didn't chose Standard Mode explicitly).

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Mon Nov 26, 2001 2:43 am

2 marcuspocus:

Well, I feel absolutely stupid. Heheh... I have Pulsar software installed on drive D: and have searched for cset.ini the drive C: (thought cset.ini is a system file). I'll try again.

2 subhuman:

I know I have to re-new my comp and I will do it in a couple of months. It'll be Asus P4T-E with P4 1.7 Ghz, 512 Mb RDRAM, 19" monitor, 64Mb GeForce2 etc... But as soon as I get the new PC I'll have to record an album (I have a contract). And I want to be as much ready for it as possible. So I have to do my best with this lame config I have right now.
As for the OS, no other system than XP (2k probably would too though) works on my dying comp. All 95, 98SE, ME crash constantly. No chance to work at all. But thanks for your advis anyway.

Noctulius · Post by **Noctulius** » Tue Nov 27, 2001 2:49 am

Well, adding to CSet.ini an entry like (literally):
[PCI]
maxpcichannel=200
has no effect...