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I've got my working environment up and running, and was doing some tunes to test the system out. All was fine untill I tried to record from Pulsar wav device (final mix). Actually, this is the first time I'm recording from Pulsar. I'm getting cracks and sample dropout-ish sounds.

I'm guessing it's a bad IRQ, but the bios on P4P800 won't allow me to manually set the IRQ like my old P4T-E board. So, is there a tool that will let me do this? Pulsar's on irq 21 right now, and it's definitely sharing with the ieee controller (firewire thingy). I'm not using it at the moment, but the sample dropouts still make me want to believe it's an IRQ sharing problem.

Also, I'm worried about my windows installation. The rule of thumb was to disable acpi, but I installed with ACPI, and also have hyperthreading turned on. Which I'm guessing is okay. It's only when I try to record that problems occur. (I can monitor the sounds just fine)

Just for your info, I'm recording in Samplitude 6. I tried recording to cooledit, with the same problem. So it's not a Samplitude related problem I think. I can record just fine from my Yamaha DSP factory. Actually, I can even record the Pulsar sounds going through the Yamaha DSP factory just fine. So it's only when I try to record direcly from pulsar wav device that the problem occurs.

What's your guess? Any help appreciated.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2004-01-24 03:28 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2004-01-24 03:44 ]</font>

I've got two Pulsar II's and a Scope all on IRQ 9, but not shared with any other device. Try moving the card to another pci slot so it has a dedicated IRQ.

HT should be cool, acpi might or might not be the problem. What is your latency set to?

That's the thing. Newer motherboards give devices IRQ channels like 21 or 22. And there's no option in the BIOS to change it. My ULLI is at 13ms, which ran perfectly fine before I upgraded to P4P800.

So it seemed like switching PCI slots was the only way to get the BIOS to change the IRQ channel, and I did so. I tried a bunch of combinations with the same result. I'm pretty much at my wit's end. I've read about people with P4P800 who have thier system up running just fine. If you're one of them, please share how you set it up.

Here's what I have in my PCI slots:
Promise IDE controller
Pulsar II
Yamaha DSP factory
IEEE host card

Ken, using ACPI to manage your IRQ on your Asus board is a good thing. I don't have the P4P, mine is a P4C800, but on my board PCI slots 1 and 5 only share with each other (and not with the AGP bus as is rumored). I think this might be the same with your board.

I can't get into the Asus site right now to download the P4P manual to check its PCI-IRQ assignments, but I suggest you get it.

http://www.asus.com/support/download/it ... 0%20Deluxe

I disable, in BIOS, all the MBoard functions I'm not using - extra USB, USB2, LAN, Firewire, Audio, serial ports, AND HT. Everything I read about HT (including Samplitude support) says it's not worth the hassle, doesn't offer much benefit, and doesn't work with all applications. If you do use it, you have to assign SFP to the first processor - see Andre D's post on this.

The Asus BIOS is excellent for its options, and you'll no doubt get your board running smoothly.

/dave

Edit:
Ok I got the P4P800 manual - it looks like the USB Controller shares IRQ with every PCI bus - I've never seen that before! Except for USB sharing, Slots 1 & 5 are good, slot 2 shares with LAN, slot 3 with RAID, slot 4 with FW. I don't know how you get around the USB sharing though, short of disabling USB which I'm sure you don't want to do. Maybe it's not a big beal. Someone using this board will jump in here.
/d

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dbmac on 2004-01-24 09:26 ]</font>

where's the post by andre located? (maybe I didn't search hard enough)

I also tried disabling HT, which didn't make a difference. I'm still guessing it's an IRQ issue.. okay, I'm not too clear on what this whole IRQ 22 thing is about. I read in another thread that newer boards have high IRQ numbers and each device gets its own unique IRQ. Well, if this was true, I probably wouldn't be getting errors. So, I'm guessing that internally, there are still a limited amount of IRQs, and the number I see are only representations of what actually is shared IRQ.

Wow, maybe I'm too tired from tweaking. I'm beginning to sound like the Matrix. LOL

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2004-01-24 10:14 ]</font>

On 2004-01-24 09:37, kensuguro wrote:
where's the post by andre located? (maybe I didn't search hard enough)

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... 8&forum=19

You're right, I think the board only has 15 physical IRQ allocations - all the IRQ numbers above 15 are "virtual", provided by XP's ACPI. But they work.

You mention
"Here's what I have in my PCI slots:
Promise IDE controller
Pulsar II
Yamaha DSP factory
IEEE host card"

Are these all PCI cards? Can't you use the Asus onboard IDE controller and IEEE?

Try slot 1 or 5 for your Pulsar, and beware of any activity on the USB bus when you're recording.

/dave

well, the normal P4P800 doesn't have onboard IEEE, and also the I have too many HDs so I need an extra HD controller. Anyhow, my older setup worked just fine with all these cards so they shouldn't be a problem (although the "order" may be).

Anyhow, I was reading through ASUS's manual and was wondering what the hell this chart means. In particular, the "A B C D" part. I guess the chart shows which IRQs are sharing, but from what I see, they ALL seem to be sharing with one thing or the other.. I just don't get how this chart works. But it seems like a vital key to the solution.

My guess is that if I totally turn off USB, then slot 3 and 4 becomes free. Does that sound right? The rest of the slots are sharing with each other, or other unmovable devices so they're pretty much stuck in sharing more I suppose.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2004-01-24 11:03 ]</font>

and WALLA! I've got it to work!
The final solution was that I had to put Pulsar in either slot 3 or 4, turn USB totally off (if you're using both slot 3 and 4), and turn hyperthreading off. I'll post this solution in the tech thread too for those who are interested in the P4P800 board.

Thanx for the pointers dbmac, couldn't have done it without your advice. And everyone else who offered help, of course.

You've probably already figured this out, but you can try enabling the USB controller in BIOS then selectively disable individual ports in Windows device manager and you might come up with a set of USB busses that don't interfere with any crucial IRQ.

/dave