16 DSPs and PCI Master Overflow problem

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 8:55 am

Hello to all!

I finally got a Pulsar2 and a Pulsar XTC to add to my Pulsar1, resulting in 16 DSPs at my disposal. I have set up everything as suggested by CW and everything seems to be okey EXCEPT that I get a PCI Master Overflow message, a lot before managing to load in full all the DSP capacity. Thus, I Cannot use my 16 DSPs as I wish..
My setup is:
P4 2.4GHz (533FSUB)
Asus P4T533-C with latest non-beta BIOS
2 IBM GXP120 drives (120GB and 40GB, each one master at a different EIDE channel)
Matrox G550 Dual Head Graphics card with latest Windows Certified drivers
1GB Kingston RDRAM PC800 (2x512MB)
TEAC CRW540E CDRW-ROM (slave on the primary EIDE channel)
Codegen 400W PSU
No other devices and cards except:
Pulsar 2 (in motherboard slot 2)
Pulsar XTC (slot 3)
Pulsar 1 (slot 4), all connected correclty with 2 STDM cables as suggested by CW
OS: WinXP SP1, tweaked for audio use

Except from the PCI Overflow, I am experiencing another problem, which I did not have when working previously with my Pulsar1 card only: everything in the SFP window works in Slow Motion!

Please, I would be really grateful if you could help me overcome the PCI Overflow problem, and be able to 'enjoy' my system and make some music!

Thank you very much in advance!

P.S. Does anybody know what the "reset if board idle" is supposed to mean/do?

[ This Message was edited by: rodos1979 on 2002-12-23 09:01 ]

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 10:40 am

Hello again!

I had a look at the IRQs page and I saw I have some shared IRQs between my Pulsars and other devices (mainly USB ports).
The IRQs list is as follows:
Resource
IRQ 23 Asustek USB Enhanced Host Controller
IRQ 23 Creamware Pulsar2 (XTC) ****

IRQ 22 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
IRQ 22 NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
IRQ 22 Creamware Pulsar2 ****

IRQ 21 NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
IRQ 20 Creamware Pulsar
IRQ 16 Matrox Millennium G550
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
IRQ 0 System timer
The "device status" is OK for all above.

Although I have disabled all USB ports in the BIOS, XP seem to override my BIOS settings and enable them back.

So, it seems that I ve got 2 solutions:
a) Force my Pulsar cards on different IRQs
b) Disable in Windows the devices that I do not use and let the Pulsar cards intact.

Which solution do you think is the best? (plan b sounds more logical to me) And how do I go doing it? Please give your opinions and ideas!

Thank you!

P.S. In case you haven't noticed it from the table above: I have installed XP as ACPI and not as Standard PC

[ This Message was edited by: rodos1979 on 2002-12-23 10:43 ]

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 11:27 am

The IRQ21 with NEC USB is the USB2 stuff that is taking all PCI bandwidth... I use the same board, and you have to disable this USB2 thing....

To disable it you need to move a jumper on the motherboard... No way to totaly disabling it from BIOS... You can only disable the USB1 stuff from bios (the asustek usb devices).

Also, your Pulsar1 is in a good pci slot, but your XTC and Pulsar2 are sharing with hardware stuff...

Since i have the same board, i can tell you that once the USB2 is disabled, the PCI slot 1 & 5 are NOT sharing with anything else at all, so use those 2 slot for your Pulsar XTC and Pulsar2. Just don't move your Pulsar1, since it is perfect where it is now.

Hope it help!

[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2002-12-23 11:29 ]

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 1:34 pm

Hello!

Marcus, thank you very much for replying and giving me ideas. I am going to try right now what you suggested. Although I had disabled the USB stuff both in Bios and in XP, I still was experiencing the same problem. I am going now to open the case and change the jumper setting as you suggested.
The only thing I cannot do, from what you suggest, is position any of my cards at slot 1. I think it is going to be too close to the AGP graphics card and far away from the other 2 cards cards sitting at slots 4 and 5 (my STDM cable wont be long enough).
Anyway...I am going to try and I will let you know!

Thank you

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 12:28 pm

Hello!

Marcus, I have done what you have suggested: I disabled the USB2 with the jumper settings on the motherboard, uninstalled SFP3.1 and audio-card drivers, repositioned the audio-cards (P2 @ slot1, XTC @ slot4 & P1 @ slot5) and reinstalled SFP... Now I have no IRQ sharing between my audio-cards and other stuff. Each card has its unique IRQ, which is great! BUT the PCI Overflow Problem still remains!

So, it must be something else...
In the Sharing/Conflicts Page of the System Info I see the following: (amongst others)
Resource Device
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 PCI bus
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 Direct memory access controller

Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Intel(R) 82850/82860 Processor to AGP Controller - 2532
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Matrox Millennium G550

As we can see I have the PCI bus sharing resources with other stuff...which may be the cause of PCI overflow... What could I do about that? Anybody, any ideas?

Thank you

[ This Message was edited by: rodos1979 on 2002-12-24 12:32 ]

LHong · Post by **LHong** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 4:59 pm

How about try to assign form BIOS, all Pulsar cards as same IRQ! Then change PCI latency from 32 to about 64 or more, for example to see anything would be better. Honestly, I wouldn't have more than 2 Creamware cards in same system, make sure that you have enough DC-PWR-Sup(~450W?) and many cooling-fans...
Good lucks,
Long

[ This Message was edited by: LHong on 2002-12-24 17:00 ]

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 9:18 am

Hello!

LHong, thank you for the ideas. Well, I tried assigning all the CW cards to the same IRQ in BIOS but WinXP (ACPI) seems not to take in account at all the BIOS settings! I ll try, as you suggest, to change the PCI latency in BIOS and see what happens...
My PC case has a 400W PSU and 3 case fans...do you think I need more than that? (but this is another question anyway...)
Well, I hope I overcome the PCI overflow problem soon and finally make some music again..

Thank you!

P.S. Merry Christmas to all!

LHong · Post by **LHong** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 1:28 pm

rodos1979,
Just try to make sure 1 more thing about the G550 and mother-board with the latest drivers for wins2k/XP, then re-run the setup. What I would do is that trying one-by-one pulsar in system to see if there is any other hardware, software or/and driver issues. Just try to understand, which is caused the troubles!
Good luck,
Long

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 7:34 am

Hello!

I formated my hard drive and reinstalled WinXP with the option of 'Standard PC' instead of ACPI. I assigned all the CW cards to the same IRQ and tried various settings in the BIOS (PCI latency, various settings of the AGP card) but with no success...

I have tried all possible IRQ settings, but still the same...
Actually, I get a whole new problem now! I can just load a little bit more the DSPs than before BUT I get this message now:
"A capacity limit of your DSP cards has been reached. The specific cause:
No more STDM connections from board 2 to 0."
I get this message at around 60-70% of DSP load. (board2 is my Pulsar1 card and board0 the Pulsar2 card)
I checked the STDM cables and they seem to be well connected...
What else can I do? I am sure there must be one way to make everything work...isn't it?

Thank you

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 10:56 am

Hello!

Here I am again!...I cleaned the stdm cables with pure alcohol and all the contacts on the cards...I saw a minor improvement but now I get a new error message: Dsp capacity reached blah blah...cause: "No DSP placement found!" I get this message at about 70-80% od DSP load when I do not have any MasterVerb loaded. When I load MasterVerbs, it lets me load only 2 of them (@96KHz) before I get the PCI Overflow message... (the DSP load shows about 30-40%)
I will be grateful for any help!...

Thank you!

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 8:30 am

hi Rodos,

I wouldn't expect the configuration to operate reliably at 96 khz yet.
I don't know if twice the samling rate = twice the DSP load, but for timing critical stuff there's only half the time available.
If some data has to be transfered between the boards and memory the time 'slots' may become too tight and the thing gets out of sync. Not musically but from the chips communication aspects. One part asks for resources and another can't answer fast enough, at least that's my guess.
I once tried 96 khz, but with 4 DSPs that doesn't make sense at all.
Try to setup your system at 44/48 khz 24 bit.
If it's runing reliably, find out which parts would really benefit from the higher sampling rate. Not all do automatically.

cheers, Tom

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 9:19 am

Hello!

Astroman, thanks for replying...what you say sounds logical and may be the case...
What I have finally done is to remove the Pulsar1 card from my system and leave the other 2 only. Everything till the moment works excellent! No PCI overflows, 96KHz works fine, good ASIO latency. It seems that my old good Pulsar1 doesnt want to cooperate with its newer brothers (however, when alone in the PC it works fine!)...Well, life is like that... Is anybody interested in buying a Pulsar1?

Thank you

LHong · Post by **LHong** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 3:21 pm

Hey, congratulation!
I should tell you earlier about the pulsar 1, it has low PCI performance compared to pulsar 2. However, don't sell it yet, it might work well with other specific MOBO as carefully tweak. Keep in mind about the samplerate, I wouldn't use 96khz for Creamware cards, it just be waste too much DSP power unless you have to...
One more thing is about 3 cards in same system, it is not reliable as the one or two cards when you use many Verbs and audio tracks.

Regards,
Long

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 4:16 pm

On 2002-12-27 15:21, LHong wrote:
Hey, congratulation!
I should tell you earlier about the pulsar 1, it has low PCI performance compared to pulsar 2. However, don't sell it yet, it might work well with other specific MOBO as carefully tweak. Keep in mind about the samplerate, I wouldn't use 96khz for Creamware cards, it just be waste too much DSP power unless you have to...
One more thing is about 3 cards in same system, it is not reliable as the one or two cards when you use many Verbs and audio tracks.

Regards,
Long

Agreed,
I have also used 96kHz with 9 DSPs. It's nice for Acoustics/vocals/super-intricate synths & maybe the 31band EQ, but outside of that you'll spend more time tweaking so as not to get clips or errors than making tunes.

I'm guessing 96kHz will only become tenable once the HyperTransport enabled Hammer boards come out (with super-wide bus bandwidths), or a simliar Intel counterpart.

The beautiful thing is, if you're working primarily in synth/midi land, you can always just jack the samplerate once the technology's there.

You also might try just disabling/pulling everything besides the absolute bare necessities (set everything else to conservative clock-speeds, timing settings, etc.) and see what that does for you. Then if you get the results you want, start adding features back in and see what pushes it over the edge. (assuming it works the way you want barebones) I've found this approach can save a sh*tload of time over a stack of individual tweaks.

Hope that helps,
Sam

Post by **garyb** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 7:54 pm

the lower pci performance of the pulsar1 shouldn't matter unless it is seen as the first card.if it is the 2nd or 3rd card,all traffic is across stdm.if your setup causes windows to call the pulsar1 board1,you CAN swap that by using the reg edit in the manual...
hope this helps.....

sym90 · Post by **sym90** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 7:06 pm

i am pretty sure that your problems are due to the PCI slot where you put the pulsar1 board. If you remove a pulsar2 in your system and if you put the pulsar1 in the same PCI slot of the just-removed pulsar2 on your system, the problems will surely disappear!
In my systems it was quite the same with 3 boards connected. With just 1 or 2 boards EVERYTHING it's perfect! With 3 boards, i have dsp capacity limit errors with just driver loaded and just 10% dsp load!

Now i am with a scope/SP (old scopeI hardware without ULLI) + PowerPulsar (new scopeII hardware with ULLI , seen as first card) with 5 s-tdm cables connected between the 2 boards.

Everything is perfect now.

If i put another board, lots of problems occur. The IDEAL setup is 1-board-only : in this way you won't have any problem at all.
Upgrade your Pulsar1 to PowerPulsar and sell other pulsar2 boards! You could even earn some money and, trust me, the upgrade cost is so low that it worth each eurocent!!

hope this helps.

regards
sYm

[ This Message was edited by: sym90 on 2002-12-28 19:12 ]

rodos1979 · Post by **rodos1979** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 11:58 am

Hello!

Thank you all for replying! My system works just fine as it is at the moment (with 2 Pulsar2 boards). I may install the Pulsar1 board to my old PC or sell it... Well, 12 DSPs is not so bad after all...
A new question (or should I make a new "topic" for that?):
Does anybody know how I could connect the 2 PCs together? What I want is to be able to use DSPs of the Pulsar1 too, and the CPU of the other PC. Must the 2 PCs be running the same OS?

Thank you

P.S. Happy and Creative New Year to All!!

Post by **garyb** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 1:04 pm

there was a post on midi over lan.i don't have time to find the link now,but a search should find it easily.i'll look myself later if you don't find it.you could use adat ports as well..

[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2002-12-30 13:05 ]

volantiz · Post by **volantiz** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 12:30 am

Back to the pci-overflow problem.. i get that with only one pulsar2-card. And i ONLY get it when i'm trying to load the STS2000-sampler. I'm running a very optimized windows xp and my pulsar2 got it's own irq (5). I had the same problem when i ran windows 2000.
Abit mobo with p3 733MHz cpu. Any suggestions? It doesn't matter so much i guess.. i'm probably gonna go get an e-mu e6400 or akai s5000 any day now.. but i still wants a fully functional card

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 1:18 am

Volantiz, have a read in the tweaks pages for that. I think you will have the same problem if you load a reverb -some reverbs create as much traffic on the PCI bus as 100 ASIO channels. Also STS series uses PCI bus to store and play samples.

What chipset do you have? VIA chipsets are known to get this problem. If you don't have a VIA, post more specs or run a search here on PCI overflow.

Btw, why invest in a hardware sampler if you can have it (and many times;) on DSP? I found S-5000 a pain in the butt to control, it allows only 1, yes one, custom CC#. At least STS-5000 has 10 CC#, plus formant pitch shifting