Sorry Individu, I never meant you should know everything, I meant that, as a computer tech, you've probably been exposed to Windows and its multitude of quirkiness at least once.
What I meant by hardware and software vendors is, the hardware vendors decide to build the motherboards and CPU, they decide what standard and protocols they will implement, how it's going to be implemented, and so on. Creamware doesn't have control over Intel putting HT in their CPU, Creamware doesn't have control over Windows' driver interface, Creamware doesn't have control over the buggy VIA PCI implementation, Creamware doesn't have control over ACPI/Standard PC stuff, Creamware didn't decide to keep the dirty IRQ stuff that should have been phased out of hardware long ago. Creamware can't provide you with a patch for the operating system, or a patch for your motherboard's firmware, or a patch for another of your hardware device.
Also, Creamware can't test their cards with every single motherboard in existence, or every single Creamware+other PCI card in exitence, and your motherboard manufacturer also can't test every card with their motherboards, nor every card combination.
I also meant that Windows, out of the box, isn't made for high caliber reliable time-critical work like shovelling 16, 24 or 32 (or more) streams of audio, it's made to browse the web and send emails and do office work. With some work, you can get it to be pretty reliable, but it's still going to be quirky.
Given how many motherboards, cpu, and PCI device configuration possible in the PC, some of them are bound to cause conflicts. And sometimes, it's really not easy to figure out, i.e a certain video card on a certain motherboard will work great, and a certain audio card with the same motherboard will work great, but if you put the 2 cards together on the same motherboard, things will messy up. Sometimes, drivers conflict with each other, even if by themselves they work great. Given the HUGE amount of different hardware and drivers floating around for PC, making a full list of every working/not working combiation is almost impossible.
Best you can do is check out forums with lots of users who have tried lots of different combinations and can tell you what works and what doesn't. So, at least, you ended up at the right place
So again, I never meant to imply you had to know everything, quite the contrary, having done a fair bit of tech support myself, I have alot of respect for people how fix computer problems, and I know full well that even after years of experience, you simply can't know how to fix everything. I also know that setting up Creamware stuff can be fairly voodoo-esque, but I also know that the efforts are 110% (and more) worth the effort.
So, to get back to your specific problem, power supply shouldn't be a problem as far as power goes. I'm running Scope + Luna cards (18 dsps total), cheapo sb-emulating card, network card, GeForce2 GTS card, 2 hard drives and 2 cd drives (dvdrom + cdwriter) without any problems off a 300W power supply.
On the other hand, a faulty power supply might be the culprit. Sometimes it's just slightly faulty, and might send voltage spikes (or dips) once in a while that might cause a crash.
Something else you could also try, is removing all the cards you can from your computer, except video and Creamware, and see how that works. If you can get a different video card from another computer/friend to try it out, that would be worth the try.
You can also try to put the Creamware card in different PCI slots. Some motherboards have slots that share IRQs (like my Asus CUSL2 board's PCI slot 1 and 5 are linked/shared.)
Again, you might think it's alot of trouble and it's Creamware's fault, but Creamware didn't built the motherboard, nor the operating system, they have to work with the interface provided by the hardware (PCI) and software (windows drivers) vendors. Creamware cards are highly complex and demanding, its not just a simple network card.
Also, remember that Microsoft doesn't really sell the hardware their OS runs on, so unless you have a multimillion contract with them, they really don't give a damn wether their OS works tighly with your hardware. If you go with Apple, you'll pay a bit more (not that much tho these days,) but at least they support both hardware and software, and can't give you the "we can't do anything, try your hardware vendor" excuse.
Unfortunately, SFP doesn't run on OSX yet
.
OTOH, I really doubt you'd have less trouble with Digidesign cards, but given how much you pay for them, they'll probably help you support them a bit more
. UAD/Poco might be simpler to operate, but they don't have any I/O, so this simplifies things a bit.
Also, about the upgrades/updates, I'm not sure why you'd want them. The SFP software is highly stable at this point, and doesn't need updating at all (personal opinion.) Some of the devices, maybe (*cough*sampler*cough*optimaster*cough*), and again this is something you can bug Creamware with, and apparently some people have trouble with drivers (I don't
), and again you can bug Creamware with this, but the software itself really doesn't need updating, and that's a good sign, because only broken things need to be updated/fixed =P. At least, from purely personal experience, in the 5 years I've been using Creamware cards, their software has consistently been the most stable software on my machine. I've had it run for 7 days straight with Logic without problems. Then again, my machine was built around the card, and it's older tech with none of the newer HT/denormalizing gimmicks.)
So, sorry for the long rant, sorry if you misunderstood what I meant, and believe me we'll (at least, I will, and no Creamware doesn't pay me, but they gave out SDK, so they have my eternal gratitude, even if they can sell all my eventual plugins at no charge for like 10 years
) do everything to help you get the most out of your cards.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: symbiote on 2004-12-03 11:18 ]</font>
