win2k stuff of a techie nature

[Gary_101]

hi folks,

been neglecting my Pulsars for a couple of years; time for some kind of "upgrade", but I need a little techy assistance. I'm running two Pulsar boards (I & II) in parallel on an older P3 1gig CPU. A lowly 256 Meg of Ram. It's actually been fine for the work I do; and I must say, I really love the Creamware products (or is Creamware now defunct? sorry, been out of touch). I'm using Scope 4.0.

I recently inherited a (free!) Dell poweredge 1400SC server with two 160-gig SCSI's ... whiich would be wonderful for audio work. The server box has a slightly slower CPU (800MHz), but more memory (512M). I plan to upgrade the RAM to 2 gigs (ouch* it's that pricey ECC error-checking RAM).

My queries are more OS oriented. The server comes with a legal Win 2000 server system, which I can cleanly re-install, so my questions are this: I see that Win2000 is supported on the Scope 4 CD. Would the "server" version of this software still do the trick?

And, if I do this clean install, I believe that XP required some kind of "hack" when you installed it, something about the "adaptec ASPI mode" or whatever. (my memory cells have migrated elsewhere!). Is this kind of "install hack" still needed with Win2k server? or is it even possible?

Uh, leessee... yeah, the IRQ stuff. A wonderfully knowledgeable Creamware guy helped me with my last install, but I'm not sure he's still on this Planet! He set up the IRQ's in BIOS; said stuff like the 2 cards are best in slot ___ and slot ___ and ... was it one IRQ forced to both slots, or 2 IRQ's, one forced to each slot? .... and then, what IRQ's are best to use? seems some IRQ's windows reserves for specific defaults, so's best to use certain IRQ's for Pulsar?

anyway, if anyone could help me fill in the blanks, I'd be much grateful.

and maybe as a final "upgrade" to my lost history ... is the new scope worth considering? anything in Linux, Mac? (got my first Mac laptop, and I'm in binary heaven! why have i been a cross-eyed PC nurd all these years?)


anyway, thanks for any pointers on the above...

Gary

[valis]

You WILL need to install Adaptec ASPI layer for Win2k server, Xp no longer requires this. ASPI is used to access the cd-rom from within Scope.

Win2k server will work just fine, but you'll need to figure out what services you can disable. Even with 512MB ram you're going to have to do some tweaking to cut down the amount of unnecessary stuff running.

Older p3 era motherboards with SCSI controllers can compromise your dsp performance (they hog the pci bus). Dig into the SCSI BIOS and see if you can limit the datarate and pci latency for the controller. At least the datarate should be controllable for each drive...

The *best* IRQ to use is one that is not used by anything else on the system. Go into your motherboard's bios (separate from the scsi controller bios) and disable unused parallel ports, serial ports and anything else you're not going to use (onboard audio?). On older machines like that the first & last slots are generally to be avoided (assuming 4-5 pci slots) as the first will share an irq with the AGP bus (or the onboard graphics) and the last slot usually shares with the one above it. Onboard devices may share with ANY slot, but usually the middle ones on a machine of that era. Also note that if you do NOT have an agp card the onboard graphics may or may not work for you, and will have very limited driver support. If you find you have onboard graphics and they aren't working out, adding a PCI graphics card alongside a SCSI controller is going to restrict your PCI bandwidth even more.

[astroman]

I've had a peek at some older specs of the machine and it looks like it doesn't use the onboard SCSI, but a PCI card instead - which multiplies the bus performance problems Valis predicts.
The memory is about $50 per 512 MB.
Most modern apps will suffer from the low clockrate, so there's few to expect from this box.
Mind the disks may be worn or at least somewhat loud - I'd really save the time and hassle.
Depends on what you plan to run on it.
A synth/FX box only does fine on an old Asus TUSL or CUSL (I just picked up the latter one on flea market with CPU and Ram for 3 Euro)
For sequencer apps and such stuff a recent CoreDuo board from Gigabyte with 2 Gigs is almost the same that you had on spend on the Ram for the server.
Btw I've been running Scope on Win2K server without problems.

cheers, Tom

[Gary_101]

Thanks Valis & Tom for your comments; much appreciated.

I recall installing the Adeptec drivers after the XP Install was done in "Standard PC" mode, which was a non-ordinary install.

I'm just wondering if this "Standard PC mode" is also required (or available) in Win2K...?

yes, the server is noisy; i think it's mostly fans. might be able to play with those.

thanks,

gary

[kylie]

if you really want such a noisy machine, you might want to check if it's got separate pci busses (which is not uncommon in servers) that might obsolete the scsi card hog problem.
but I'd go astro's way, as well

[Gary_101]

thanks Kylie,
new pc might be the way to go, but I like the Dell box, the whole server architecture is quite rugged and well-made. aside from the noise issue, it might be a nice upgrade for my two Pulsars.

turns out it does have a 1 gig P4 CPU, and, I believe, from web images, a dual CPU motherboard option. Which leads me to ask, does or can SCOPE, take advantage of dual CPU's?

if any of you know the answer to the IRQ issue: (force 1 IRQ to both boards? or seperate IRQ's to each?) ...that would help a lot.

What about that Adaptec ASPI thing, you say it's so SCOPE can read from CD-ROMs... is that only for install issues? Or loading samples off CD's? aside from Install (which could be done from files copied to HD?), I don't use SCOPE for CD browsing at all. So, if those are the only issues, I may not really need the Adaptek drivers?

The Win2k is actually a nice OS, despite all the un-needed server stuff it carries. Seems so much faster and cleaner than my over-bloated XP systems.

thanks again for updating my depleted Nerd cells..

Gary

[garyb]

xp is better for audio.

gee, you can get a p4 865chipset machine 2-3ghz for almost nothing as well. i'd go for something a little more current, just for that reason. the fact that your present machine is sufficient, means that the new machine will be a nice upgrade, but since a more powerful machine won't cost a lot more if you factor in the cost of ram, makes me encourage you to go just a little further....

anyway, dual cpus should work, and you don't need both boards on the same irq, you just want to avoid having the boards share irqs with other devices.

[katano]

xp is better for audio.

gee, you can get a p4 865chipset machine 2-3ghz for almost nothing as well. i'd go for something a little more current, just for that reason. the fact that your present machine is sufficient, means that the new machine will be a nice upgrade, but since a more powerful machine won't cost a lot more if you factor in the cost of ram, makes me encourage you to go just a little further....

+1

[kylie]

new pc might be the way to go, but I like the Dell box, the whole server architecture is quite rugged and well-made. aside from the noise issue, it might be a nice upgrade for my two Pulsars.

server hardware is mostly heavy duty and well made, but keep in mind that, given the fact it is actually a dual processor capable machine, it is not noisy but will have one (or two) PSUs capable of supporting lots of inside components (like 2 cpu, ecc ram, several scsi disk drives, expansion cards et al..) sucking more power than normal pc psus.

if any of you know the answer to the IRQ issue: (force 1 IRQ to both boards? or seperate IRQ's to each?) ...that would help a lot.

server bios'es (or whatever the manufacturers call their rom based setup utilities) have limited capabilities to assign irqs to specific components. can't tell about dell, but all the HP/Compaq/DEC machines I set up in the last years work that way. sometimes irq assignments change simultaneously for 2 or more components (be that integrated peripherals or expansion cards) when you change one setting...

The Win2k is actually a nice OS, despite all the un-needed server stuff it carries.

you can uninstall/disable lots of unneded services and components later. still I'd get rid of the dell box for a scope machine. I was tempted several times to set up an abandoned compaq proliant (these are great machines) for such purposes, but the noise and power comsumption always kept me off it. get a decent workstation, you won't regret it. there are several brands that make nice boxes, being solid and trustworthy as well.

-greetings, markus-