You're misunderstanding your own problem. If you actually want to get a Scope DAW running get a different mobo (one of the one's with successfull reports here on Z) & set it up properly. It's that simple.
I'd agree that CWA defense is somtimes misguidedly on some folks agenda here, but not for us all. In this case however, I really do feel that your problems are a combo of bad luck & impatience, rather than a problem with your CW card. At this end we have 2 Scope rigs. One that's been running a PulsarII & 2 PS's flawlessly (99.7% of the time at least) for more than 12 months on an A7N8X-deluxe & one that's recently been successfully setup & running sweet in a testing phase on an Asrock K7NF2-RAID. We're hoping the Asrock board will perform as well as our Asus has for us as it's got a similar NF2 chipset & was installed with the same tweeks. Both boxes are reasonably well optimised & we foresee no problems with them. As long as we stock up on some spare Ram & CPU's, I predict being able to run our current & future Scope cards on them for the next 3 or 4 years at least. The Asus mobo wasn't cheap when I first bought it, but the Asrock bought recently was a complete bargain at about 40euro due to SocketA chips becoming obsolete. You could say 'not a future proof investment' or similar, but it's future proof for us if it works well, which they DO
I believe there are many (dozens) of similar success stories from folks running Scope on Nforce3 mobos.... amongst many others. So I'm sorry to blunt, but I think you're talking out of your sphinkter.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-04-04 03:42 ]</font>
asus dualcore and pc freezes
I haven't read up on your mobo BTW, but if it turns out to be one with good reports running Scope, then obviously your setups have had some sorts of flaws (could be various, could be your fault, could be bad luck, who knows)
Frustration & slagging off an excellent little company like CWA doesn't help anyone. Follow Astroman's tips, follow other peoples', problem solve the situation, right a list (your own check list for problem solving) whatever it takes. If you're not prepared to do what it takes & undergo the often annoying or tedious job of problem solving a PC with problems, sell your audio cards & buy a tin flute.
Frustration & slagging off an excellent little company like CWA doesn't help anyone. Follow Astroman's tips, follow other peoples', problem solve the situation, right a list (your own check list for problem solving) whatever it takes. If you're not prepared to do what it takes & undergo the often annoying or tedious job of problem solving a PC with problems, sell your audio cards & buy a tin flute.
First of all a big "thanks' to astroman wich bothered to write such detailed troubleshooter...
I done the most you said - I had working Luna with 3.1c drivers on original CD - the allkeys were printed on manual, I entered them by hand. That was of course done on clean installed XP ( formatted, all redundant hardware removed/disabled - lan, audio, modem... )
I didn't check the capps, c'mon it is not a TV from '76
Seriously it is brand new, and the same problem on previous (asus)
I even wipe the card with pure alcochol...
I did't wanted to bother other people with detailed work in a whole year, what methods did I tried, but there is another thing that I should check:
I will take it to another platform (AMD NFORCE4) wich never interacted with my soft/hardware. I will take previous working 3.1c drivers, and previous working LUNA2 also, and try to install it on it. IF there is a same problem, then, as you say, combination of bad luck, and who knows what, my card is BROKEN, and that is that.
That platform is totally different than mine in every aspect. Paid hefty also
to Shroomz:
I can't change mobos every day, I have tried it with 2 mobos. Don't know if they checked as 'SCOPE COMPATIBLE' on this forum, but only one thing left to do, and that is what I wrote above.
cheerz...
I done the most you said - I had working Luna with 3.1c drivers on original CD - the allkeys were printed on manual, I entered them by hand. That was of course done on clean installed XP ( formatted, all redundant hardware removed/disabled - lan, audio, modem... )
I didn't check the capps, c'mon it is not a TV from '76
Seriously it is brand new, and the same problem on previous (asus)
I even wipe the card with pure alcochol...
I did't wanted to bother other people with detailed work in a whole year, what methods did I tried, but there is another thing that I should check:
I will take it to another platform (AMD NFORCE4) wich never interacted with my soft/hardware. I will take previous working 3.1c drivers, and previous working LUNA2 also, and try to install it on it. IF there is a same problem, then, as you say, combination of bad luck, and who knows what, my card is BROKEN, and that is that.
That platform is totally different than mine in every aspect. Paid hefty also
to Shroomz:
I can't change mobos every day, I have tried it with 2 mobos. Don't know if they checked as 'SCOPE COMPATIBLE' on this forum, but only one thing left to do, and that is what I wrote above.
cheerz...
I wasn't suggesting changing mobos every day. On the contrary, I was simply suggesting that with very little investigation at all you could easily pick one of the many mobos reported to be working well with Scope cards by users here on Z. There are people with successfull setups here ranging from PentuimII based systems to the very latest Intel & AMD + all the ones in between. If you choose just any old mobo you may potentially be reducing your chances of success considerably.
My personal taste is not to buy into the latest hardware at premium prices, but to use 2 Scope systems with slightly older compatible components which SFP runs well on. I never feel the need to go and spend a mint on a new state of the art box blindly hoping it will do everything for me.
But that's just me.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-04-05 04:08 ]</font>
My personal taste is not to buy into the latest hardware at premium prices, but to use 2 Scope systems with slightly older compatible components which SFP runs well on. I never feel the need to go and spend a mint on a new state of the art box blindly hoping it will do everything for me.
But that's just me.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-04-05 04:08 ]</font>
The 2 previous motherboards you used were both Intel i865PE based, and that chipset *IS* known to work just fine with Scope. It just takes a little bit of configuration on your part.
NForce4 is pretty much known to *NOT* work adequately with Scope cards, so I would suggest this is NOT a solution to your problems.
NForce4 is pretty much known to *NOT* work adequately with Scope cards, so I would suggest this is NOT a solution to your problems.
from the RME site regarding the nforce4 chipset.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techin ... _tests.htm
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techin ... _tests.htm
Oh god, I am really out of options!
You are absolutely right, NForce4 doesn't act well as DAW, I read it on Steinberg forum - they say that PCI express eats too much bandwidth - so it means that all newer motherboards with PCI express suffer from the same...
But, let it crackle, pop, whatever. Maybie it won't freeze with midi... I am curios to try, I really can't think of another solution.
Is there anyone using Intel Prescott 3.0 HT 2mb cache with 865/875 socket 478 on this forum to confirm working Scope on it? It is maybie processor wich is problematic (indeed - it has all the nonstandard stuff in it !)
I will repeat that it works fine with northwood 2.4 and *sis* chipset
(yeah - sis was claimed as worst chipset ever, but worked fine for me with scope. No frezzes, pops, clicks, exceptions...)
Thanks to all that are trying to help...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: psionic on 2006-04-05 19:02 ]</font>
You are absolutely right, NForce4 doesn't act well as DAW, I read it on Steinberg forum - they say that PCI express eats too much bandwidth - so it means that all newer motherboards with PCI express suffer from the same...
But, let it crackle, pop, whatever. Maybie it won't freeze with midi... I am curios to try, I really can't think of another solution.
Is there anyone using Intel Prescott 3.0 HT 2mb cache with 865/875 socket 478 on this forum to confirm working Scope on it? It is maybie processor wich is problematic (indeed - it has all the nonstandard stuff in it !)
I will repeat that it works fine with northwood 2.4 and *sis* chipset
(yeah - sis was claimed as worst chipset ever, but worked fine for me with scope. No frezzes, pops, clicks, exceptions...)
Thanks to all that are trying to help...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: psionic on 2006-04-05 19:02 ]</font>
well, i never tried the 2mb cache version. the 1mb cache works pretty well. try disabling hyperthreading. it's not really doing much, anyway......
btw, the 955x chipset is on a pci express mobo and those are working well for a number of users. the real problem with the pcie mobos is that the manufacturers are only concerned with video. nvidia obviously spent their time optimizing for dual pci express vid cards instead of thinking about someone using the pci bus for audio cards....there'll likely be a bios revision that works eventually.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2006-04-05 19:07 ]</font>
btw, the 955x chipset is on a pci express mobo and those are working well for a number of users. the real problem with the pcie mobos is that the manufacturers are only concerned with video. nvidia obviously spent their time optimizing for dual pci express vid cards instead of thinking about someone using the pci bus for audio cards....there'll likely be a bios revision that works eventually.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2006-04-05 19:07 ]</font>
psionic YOUR THE MAN!!!
thanx to your advice the freez stopped!!!!!
reminder abt what psionic wrote:
OK, and now, the FINAL solution for random freezing and crashes !!!
I have been investigating this for months and discovered following:
The problem seems to be IRQ channel greater than 16 or "APIC ACPI Function" - wich means that advanced IRQ steering routine is active. It is the case with all newer motherboards, and no other things like HyperThreading, dual core etc are the problem. Disabling APIC through BIOS will 1000% solve all problems with SCOPE and random freezing, but will disable OS support for HT (even if it remains enabled in BIOS). So, after disabling ACPI APIC function in BIOS, you should reinstall windows and you will get only 16 IRQ channels, and also - working SCOPE. If you have more than 16 IRQs on your computer, it meens that APIC is enabled, and you could expect instabillity from SFP. Some motherboards do not have possibility to disable APIC, so you need to install standard PC, but you will loose a lot of different enchantments of your OS. I do not recommend that. With APIC disabled you will loose only HyperThreading. ( Only?! )
Please CREAMWARE, solve this problem, FIX YOUR DAMN DRIVERS !!!
The message for me: install window after disabling ACPI
by the way i bought special for scope this:
asus P5GD2-X
intelP4 531J 3.0 gig/1mb
kingstonddr2 1 Gb
the dualcore (config i started the thread with) i use now with motu828mkII flawless. but i guess with this advice of psionic scope would have worked also on the dualcore.
wauw, finally explore the creamware modulars and flexor and use psyQ and optimaster. will use the scope system also with toslink through the motu into the dualcore setup.
right now i have a 6 dsp scope 4.5 card. now it works i maybe would like to upgrade to more dsp's. any advice on 2nd hand solution for this. risks?
thanx to your advice the freez stopped!!!!!
reminder abt what psionic wrote:
OK, and now, the FINAL solution for random freezing and crashes !!!
I have been investigating this for months and discovered following:
The problem seems to be IRQ channel greater than 16 or "APIC ACPI Function" - wich means that advanced IRQ steering routine is active. It is the case with all newer motherboards, and no other things like HyperThreading, dual core etc are the problem. Disabling APIC through BIOS will 1000% solve all problems with SCOPE and random freezing, but will disable OS support for HT (even if it remains enabled in BIOS). So, after disabling ACPI APIC function in BIOS, you should reinstall windows and you will get only 16 IRQ channels, and also - working SCOPE. If you have more than 16 IRQs on your computer, it meens that APIC is enabled, and you could expect instabillity from SFP. Some motherboards do not have possibility to disable APIC, so you need to install standard PC, but you will loose a lot of different enchantments of your OS. I do not recommend that. With APIC disabled you will loose only HyperThreading. ( Only?! )
Please CREAMWARE, solve this problem, FIX YOUR DAMN DRIVERS !!!
The message for me: install window after disabling ACPI
by the way i bought special for scope this:
asus P5GD2-X
intelP4 531J 3.0 gig/1mb
kingstonddr2 1 Gb
the dualcore (config i started the thread with) i use now with motu828mkII flawless. but i guess with this advice of psionic scope would have worked also on the dualcore.
wauw, finally explore the creamware modulars and flexor and use psyQ and optimaster. will use the scope system also with toslink through the motu into the dualcore setup.
right now i have a 6 dsp scope 4.5 card. now it works i maybe would like to upgrade to more dsp's. any advice on 2nd hand solution for this. risks?
with standard pc you will notice that freezes will disappear.
and it is good to manually set irqs from bios.
there are good chances to make your system without shares.
you must be sure for the pci slot that you put scopes cards not to share with any other onboard device.
it's not that difficult to find a pci slot that is free.
problems appear with more than one scope card because of nowdays 3max pci.
you will see that after disabling many onboard device the system will work fine.
for example usbs. leave 1 one usb2 having irq3.
all other usbs disabled.
if you make it work this way it will be easier to switch to acpi again.
and it is good to manually set irqs from bios.
there are good chances to make your system without shares.
you must be sure for the pci slot that you put scopes cards not to share with any other onboard device.
it's not that difficult to find a pci slot that is free.
problems appear with more than one scope card because of nowdays 3max pci.
you will see that after disabling many onboard device the system will work fine.
for example usbs. leave 1 one usb2 having irq3.
all other usbs disabled.
if you make it work this way it will be easier to switch to acpi again.