Powerpulsar/Scope Professional what???

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:40 am

Hi Folks .... did I miss something with the new Creamware ?

I've been very busy so I must have .

My system consists of 2 x Powerpulsar and 1 x Pulsar2 cards Win XP AsusTUSL2-C mobo P31.4Ghz Tualatin-S old system but works great ....until I decided to get that 3rd "Powerpulsar" .... the shop had one left but it's called Scope Professional now ..they said it was exactly the same .

I installed it and now my system is unstable ...I now get 'unexpected dsp overload :communication error with board 2 ..." crashes. Strange ..the dsp meter says 45dsps and is reading quite low usage but the cards are NOT physically the same ...the new Scope Pro card has only 14dsps .... the sharc on the "side" of the card has gone ,
( so there are really only 44dsps in my system ) also , 2 toshiba chips normally on the back of the Powerpulsars are not included on the Scope Pro card .

Maybe I got a card that was being used for spare parts and packed by mistake ....??
These cards are not happy together .

Can anyone shed light on this?

Regards,

Michael

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:33 am

Could be a heat issue - have you got a fan blowing on the cards?

/dave

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:39 am

....forgot to mention ...the new Scope Professional card replaces the Pulsar2 ( happens to be board2 ) ... so it's still a 3 card system . I've double checked the pci slot and stdm connections ..as far as I know they're all ok .
Regards,
M

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:56 am

Thank gentlemen for your replies .

Stardust , yes I've heard about the 15th dsp doing the chip management etc for the other 14 . but this Scope Pro card has only 14sharcs not 15sharcs the PowerPulsars have 15 So they are different boards obviously ....? M

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 12:54 pm

well, I trust in your abilities to count the chips - and if I remember right Arcadios also mentioned it

The 2 Toshibas (on the old boards) are Ram chips (look like IO buffers), but afaik they have never been used, according to rumors.

I you can rule out heat (as already mentioned) and a too weak powersupply (not that easy, as the Watt specs aren't worth the sticker they are printed on...), and the error remains - then I'd setup the system with the new board as the 'main' card (by either slot change or cset.ini modification).

it's pure speculation, but the drivers then should deal with the new card in the first place and see the others as DSP extenders

cheers, Tom

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 8:13 pm

I have 2 powerpulsar and one scope SRB in old p 2.8 nothwood in 850emv2 MB,no problem here,I use all stdm connector,my vendor say that use all stdm connector is better

quote:
but the cards are NOT physically the same ...the new Scope Pro card has only 14dsps .... the sharc on the "side" of the card has gone ,
( so there are really only 44dsps in my system ) also , 2 toshiba chips normally on the back of the Powerpulsars are not included on the Scope Pro card .

Try to use only the last powerpulsar that you have purcase in your system and remove the two powerpulsar that works fine for verificate bad work of this card,if the card have issue return this at your vendor

I have repair one power pulsar that have one condense out in the ouput card,now I have put new condenser and the card work fine

sorry for my english

http://digilander.libero.it/AuDi0SlAvE/homestudio.htm

[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-04-17 21:25 ]

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:33 pm

Thanks BronYaur ,
Yes , I've taken the cards out and I'm putting in just the Scope Pro to test and make sure it's ok ....good time to clean everything anyway. Also , just got a 500watt pwr supply to replace the 300watt existing unit. I think running 3 Scope cards , a scsi pci card and 4 hards drives might be too much for 300watt.
Astroman ..... how weird is that ? ..putting ram chips on a board then not using them, maybe the development money ran out at Creamware who knows? ...hmmm
Cheers,
MV

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 12:41 am

MrV, the power spec IS a marketing gimmick, one needs either luck or knowledge about what is an idustrial strength product and what's not.
Unfortunately (as it seems) not even the price is telling the truth anymore...
I have run an Intel 815 with 2 Pulsars from a 90 Watt speced thingie that was even run with reduced fan speed. From what it has sustained I would say it was a very good PSU - but that was pure luck.

I have no background info about the 2 Ram chips, but once someone mentioned this could be additional Ram for the card's temporary use and someone (who seemed trustworthy) answered the chips aren't used.

It's not wierd at all if you consider the design changes Scope ran through in it's early years - there was even a keyboard with integrated touchscreen planned... 1997(!)
They may have had a lot of cards prefabriced and with driver/OS changes the buffer wasn't needed anymore.

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2006-04-18 01:44 ]

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:15 am

I dont think is power supply problem,I run 3 scope 2 HD ata and cdr whit one real 250 watt (180 watt in to internal 5 an 12 volt line like 300 watt) and all work well

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:57 am

you're right ....power supply is not the problem...I put a new one in and same problem still .

Currently I'm playing around with
alternating the cards in different slots . We'll see .

I'm still using Scope3.1c maybe I should go to 4 or 4.5 whatever ??

I'm thinking though it's time for a clean start .... reinstall windows and everything else ...didn't want to do that damn.

Thanks guys for your suggestions .

Regards,

Michael

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:49 am

the best pci slot don't condivise whit other integrated device are from 2 to 4 generally the first slot pci are condivise whit AGP second and theerdy slot generally are not condivise whit other integrate device
good luck

[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-04-18 07:51 ]

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:40 pm

Hi BronYaur . my 3 cards are already in pci slots 2 3 and 4 1 is empty 6 is empty scsi card is in 5 . I think my IRQs are sharing .... don't know how that happened , wasn't that way when set up...very strange . IRQ sharing will not help !! hmmm

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:39 am

afaik XP must be installed in 'Standard Mode' to allow you to assign the interupts. Dunno if it applies to this old mobo as well.
I have it under W98 and no problems with the BIOS assigned interupts - XP might ignore those (according to what I've read)

cheers, Tom

valis · Post by **valis** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 11:49 am

Scsi is a potential issue with Scope cards.

I used a Xeon motherboard that had the SCSI on the 64bit bus (not raid) to keep enough bandwidth on the 32bit bus for my Scope cards. For me SCSI matters because of some of the 3d & graphics work I do. For audio however, SCSI is typically not a great idea for dsp systems, SATA with NCQ should give you most of the benefits these days anyway (but requires a modern motherboard).

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:18 am

Hi again ,
Firstly , I got very good service from Ralf at Creamware .... with some handy suggestions , I was getting a bit carried away with my concerns about the 14/15 sharc thing etc ... the cards are fine .
Good point about a new mobo with sata etc...and I just realised this problem started when I installed XP service pack 2 a few months ago .... the IRQs seem to have all changed since then!! Now I've got scsi card sharing a scope irq and another scope card is sharing with acpi whatever ... no wonder it's not happy !
How can I get the 3 scope cards to not share other irqs? ... right now they're 5 , 9 and 10 ... go to standard pc? what then?
Cheers,
Michael

bronYaur · Post by **bronYaur** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 9:51 am

yes standard pc! for me work very fine no creamware card share whit other device bat remeber standard pc is only for single processor use,for use hyper treading and dual core must use ACPI mode

good luck

[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-04-20 10:52 ]

MrV · Post by **MrV** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:23 pm

Hi again bronYaur , well I tried to change to standard pc from acpi and now system won't even boot ....goes straight to blue screen...ouch . That just confirms to me that it was time to reinstall windows ...hmmm . Pain in the arse !
Thanks anyway for your suggestions .
Regards,
MV