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I´m using the uad in a magma 2 pci slot extender connected via pcmcia to the sony vaio fe32m (1,86 intel centrino 2 duocore, 2gb ram, win xp sp2 (media center edition).
the magma box is set up with an creamware (soniccore) scope soundcard (15dsp)in the first slot, the second is the UAD 1 PCI
I had connected this configuration to my old p4 asus 845pe via the magma pci connection and haven´t had any problems so far.
but now in the sony laptop the UAD gives me this weird kind freezes.

i tested different pci latency settings and had no success, the only thing i realized is the lower processing power on the uad the more stable my overall daw system behaviour.
i also tested different drivers and deactivated unnecessary hardware devices like eg firewire, etc. with no success at all. i even changed the slots of the two cards with no success, too.

i´m quite sure that the problem comes from the uad especially when heavy loaded with plugins.
when using the uad alone in the magma extension it is working rock solid!
also the creamware scope is working rock solid when it´s alone in the magma and connected to the pcmcia of the sony fe32m.
since the combination of the two cards worked rock solid in my p4 connected to the magma i guess it has something to do with the bandwith of pcmcia.
pcmcia has a bandwidth 125mb/s
pci 2.2 in the asus 845pe has a bandwidth 500mb/s
so it seems to me that i can solve my problems when i change the magma connection from the pcmcia connection to the expresscard 34 connector (4-5 times faster than pcmcia)
what do you think? any opinions?

there´s a Magma EC34 ExpressCard/34 Module for the expansion boxes i should try. perhaps it´ll solve my problem.
since that expresscard is not that cheap i ask myself is there any expresscard adapter to pcmcia that is able to solve the bandwith problem?

If anybody has some hints please let me know.
thanks.

Hi there,

I have to confess I didn't read all your post - but the bit that said 'Media Center Edition' rang an alarm bell for me... I've only heard bad things about using MCE for music production. Just to check, have you eliminated this from anything that might be causing problems? I don't think many major sound card manufacturers explicitly support it (some explicitly DON'T support it, others just don't include it in their list of supported OSes.

HTH, and forgive me if I've missed something in your post that negates what I've just written.

Cheers!

Chris

i don´t think that it has something to with media center edition. my system works apart from the uad - scope conflict very good. ok it could cause such a thing - maybe but before i would blame the system i would blame acpi mode, but you cannot run a dualcare without acpi mode.
my older pc (p4 asus 845pe) wich runs that magma without any problems is installed with standard mode pc under sp1. maybe thats the problem, but if so my problems cannot be solved because modern dualcore systems neet to be installed in acpi mode!

helldriver wrote:
there´s a Magma EC34 ExpressCard/34 Module for the expansion boxes i should try. perhaps it´ll solve my problem.
since that expresscard is not that cheap i ask myself is there any expresscard adapter to pcmcia that is able to solve the bandwith problem?

If anybody has some hints please let me know.
thanks.

Hello again, Helldriver. Sorry to hear about your troubles...

first, about the express card:

I had a CB2 with PCMCIA on an old Compaq laptop.

I have tried the EC34 interface on a MacBook Pro with Scope, and it works a little bit better than the PCMCIA, BUT I had to upgrade the boards on the chassis to the newer ones, with pericom chips, instead of the older DEC chips AND you need a new cable (the one with silver connectors).

In case you decide to upgrade, note the newer boards don't have PCI anymore, they are PCI-X, so, although they take regular PCI, they are much bigger and may not fit your chassis. In my case, upgrading the CB2 has been a slow and complicated process, and I ended up buying everything new, anyway... (I'm still waiting for the new chassis, should be here anyday, now...).

I also tried the Duel Adapter (EC to PCMCIA) and it works well, but you're limited to PCMCIA bandwidth, so there's no real gain here apart from being able to use a faster (newer) lappie... I use it with my PCMCIA RME and it works just as if there wasn't an adapter. very well, indeed. On the other hand, I simply could not install it on a newer HP laptop, as the firmware on the EC prevented it from being initialized in 32-bit cardbus mode - and that is something everyone shoud be aware before buying a new laptop to use with Magma - many won't work. Hence, the Mac. Period.

If you have changed your setup recently, I would imagine the problems you're having could be because of the PCMCIA chip on the laptop. Magma recommends only Texas Instruments chips, and I know for a fact that not all of them will give you the same performance. Still, XP with SP2 seems to be the best way to have it all working OK. I would give it a try. And don't worry about "standard PC" on a laptop - just make a clean installation with SP2 and try again. You can also play around with latency (audio latency) and see if you can get more stability. Low latency puts more stress on the Bus, maybe too much for UAD and Scope?

From my previous experiments, I couldn't find a 2x increase in bandwidth by using the EC34. It was better, but not twice as better. As soon as I get my new chassis (should be here this week), I can tell you a bit more, as I have been trying it out just assembled on a table top

Hope this helped, and I hope you get this working quickly.

Let us know how you're doing.

cheers,

T

Hey Tau, thx for the quick information.
My sony laptop has a pcmcia controller from texas instruments. respectivly that it should be ok.
but the problem still occurs.
now i have just the chance to try out a new pci expansion box with expresscard 34. but that´s going to be a very expensive thing for me, here in germany magma is fucking expensive. but anyway before trying that i should try a clean install with win xp in standart mode.
but am i not losing my second processing core since dualcore processors need to have an acpi compliant system??

another solution would be to run the scope board alone in the magma.
via expresscard34 i could have the uad expander, but unfortunately uads´ xpander is not supporting winxp which is in my opinion unbelieveable.

if all of that is not working out for me i guess i´ll have to drop the idea to have an uad and a creamware scope in one transportable system - very disappointing imagination!

From what I remember, Sony laptops have good performance with PCMCIA magmas. But the best thing is to try it out first, then you'll know for sure what it can do. But remember to check (ask) that all the parts are compatible: Pericom-chipped controller board, PCI-X backplane, silver cables and EC34 - any other combination might not work.

Standard PC doesn't work on dual cores. A clean reinstall is always a good idea.

As for the UAD Xpander, is it Vista-only? can't believe it. At least "coming soon" are Scope's Vista drivers, so you can have both, although it's a sad scenario...

Good luck!

T

Hi

I bought a second-hand CB264 and ordered the EC34 host card to plub into my new TwinHead Dualcore laptop. No probs on the installation and no probs recognising both the Magma (DEC chip version) and 2 Scope Pro cards. However, after about 10 mins of working the whole system freezes.

Tau - how did you hear about needing to upgrade the boards in the Magma box and the cable? Did you experience something similar (ie a freeze)?

Best of luck to anyone who tries the Magma approach. One for the adventurous...

Cheers
Jeremy

Tau wrote:But remember to check (ask) that all the parts are compatible: Pericom-chipped controller board, PCI-X backplane, silver cables and EC34 - any other combination might not work.

are there other combination rules like that?
I have a big chassis with (afair) a DEC board, and that runs fine with the DEC equipped host card. no way with the pcmcia card I have (you know which ).
I intend to get myself a PCIe x1 host card. are there prerequisites (you know of) regarding the backplane, too?

-greetings, markus-

Hi there, kylie!

Sorry to hear about the PCMCIA. What problems are you having?

As for your question:

The first time I asked magma about this, they said I could use the EC34 with my DEC chassis. Ater a first failure, they pointed out there was an issue with the MacBook Pro, and that I would have no choice other than upgrading the wholoe chassis to pericom - and that includes the host card, backplane, cables - and also (as they forgot to mention) a PCI-X capable chassis.

So, I can't tell you if this is a MacBook-only issue, or if it is is more general PCI-E-related problem. On their website, magma have a new section with FAQs that address these questions, it would be better to take a look there, and, just to be safe, ask Magma sales / tech directly if they can guarantee that PCI-E interface cards can be used with DEC boards on your MOBO and have at least the same performance as the PCI (and watch your words - as I said, the EC34 "can" be used with DEC chassis, only not very well, so beware of half truths...)

Still, it's beter to do some research before paying - I started the upgrade in September and I still don't have it working, because I can't assemble the upgrade kit on my chassis... Although Magma did take responsibility for the mix-up, and actually offered to send a new chassis free-of-charge, I'm still waitng and waiting... When it arrives, I'll know for sure if the silver cable does make a difference Until then, no magma for me...


Cheers,

T

hi kylie and tau,
i recently had contact to magma technical support.
they told me that the dec 21150 will work with an ec34/54 card even with an duel pcmcia to ec34 adpater.
http://www.duel-systemsadapters.com/?productid=DP-0001

they also said that the ec34 or duel adapter will solve my problems respectivly the occasional freezings i have to fear when using scope and uad heavy loaded side by side in one magma.

the feature list of the duel adpater says the following:
"Data transfer rate up to ExpressCard maximum, limited by PCMCIA card application".
my question: will the bandwith be better via the duel apapter connected to the ec34 or will it be the same like it is on the pcmcia port??


here is my correspondence so far:

Entered on 01/29/2008 at 15:52:20 by Magma Technical Support:


Ec43 and 3c54 are the same.

Ec54 / Ec34 is compatible with Magma chassis (Dec21150), you don't need a pericom chip.



PCMCIA and Expresscard adapters are also an option, yes it will work with the magma.


Entered on 01/28/2008 at 17:25:08 by Stefan Fritz:
hi, since i don´t have a ec54 port at my sonyfe32m laptop i ougtta get me an ec34. as far as i know ec54 and ec34 are basically the same?
is this ec34 gonna work with my magma chassis (DEC21150) or do i need a new one (pericom chips)?
will be a duel PCMCIA to ExpressCard Adapter an option as well to solve my system freezing? will it work with the magma or not?
http://www.duel-systemsadapters.com/?productid=DP-0001

thx for your kindness
best regards
Stefan

> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:48 -0500
> Von: Magma Technical Support <expansionsupport@ecusthelp.com>
> An: stefan.fritz2@gmx.de
> Betreff: Freezing Problem with Creamware Scope (now Soniccore) and UAD1 ISSUE=2292 PROJ=2
>
> [Duplicate message snipped]


Entered on 01/28/2008 at 14:47:59 by Magma Technical Support:





Stefan,



Yes, the solution would be using the ExpressCard ( EC54)

For refund, it is only eligible with the first 30 days. To find out if you are still eligible for refund please contact our Sales Team and provide the exact serial number of the Ec54 and Chassis.



Thanks,

Magma Technical Support


Entered on 01/27/2008 at 14:35:01 by Stefan Fritz:
I´m using the uad in a magma 2 pci slot extender connected via pcmcia to
the sony vaio fe32m (1,86 intel centrino 2 duocore, 2gb ram, win xp sp2
(media center edition).
the magma box is set up with an creamware (soniccore) scope soundcard
(15dsp)in the first slot, the second is the UAD 1 PCI
I had connected this configuration to my old p4 asus 845pe (WinXP SP1
Standard Mode PC) via the magma pci connection and haven´t had any
problems so far.
but now in the sony laptop the UAD gives me this weird kind freezes.

i tested different pci latency settings and had no success, the only thing i
realized is the lower processing power on the uad the more stable my
overall daw system behaviour and the higher pci latency setting was the
more stable was the DAW - but then sooner or later it ends up with an
system freeze.
i also tested different drivers and deactivated unnecessary hardware
devices like eg firewire, etc. with no success at all. i even changed the slots
of the two cards with no success, too.

i´m quite sure that the problem comes from the uad especially when heavy
loaded with plugins.
when using the uad alone in the magma extension it is working rock solid!
also the creamware scope is working rock solid when it´s alone in the
magma and connected to the pcmcia of the sony fe32m.
since the combination of the two cards worked rock solid in my p4
connected to the magma i guess it has something to do with the bandwith
of pcmcia.
pcmcia has a bandwidth 125mb/s
pci 2.2 in the asus 845pe has a bandwidth 500mb/s (as far as i
investigated)
so it seems to me that i can solve my problems when i change the magma
connection from the pcmcia connection to the expresscard 34 connector (4-
5 times faster than pcmcia)
what do you think? any opinions?
BTW the Magma is an DEC 21150 referring to my systeminformations.

For the case that this problem could not be solved with an expresscard 34,
would you take back the expresscard 34 with an money refund?

Kind regards

Stefan Fritz

Jez wrote:Hi

I bought a second-hand CB264 and ordered the EC34 host card to plub into my new TwinHead Dualcore laptop. No probs on the installation and no probs recognising both the Magma (DEC chip version) and 2 Scope Pro cards. However, after about 10 mins of working the whole system freezes.

Tau - how did you hear about needing to upgrade the boards in the Magma box and the cable? Did you experience something similar (ie a freeze)?

Best of luck to anyone who tries the Magma approach. One for the adventurous...

Cheers
Jeremy

Hey Jez what kind of a notebook do you own? what controller chip is on your your laptop for the ec34 port?
does the problem still occur when using just one card?
i have the same cardbox with pcmcia card and i realized that my system is stable when deactivating either the scope or the uad, using booth causes me freezes after some time, (have you tested different latency settings?)
http://www.rainrecording.com/pro/softwa ... i-latency/
http://www.mark-knutson.com/t3/_index.html
when i set the latency to 248 (scope has normally 96 at least in my system) it takes longer till freezing is occurs.

lets hope this shit works out
stefan

Well, this seems to be a bit confusing. I had a post about this some time ago, and I'll recap my steps, configurations and results so far, so you can see where I've been and avoid pitfalls. Do remember that I am using a MacBook Pro, not a PC, so many issues may be simply due to this. And the info about the pericoms was found at the UAD users forum while googling out of frustration after configuration 3. Magma did not mention any of this when I asked and ordered the EC34, so I'm guessing it wasn't a widely known fault at the time.

Configuration zero: magma DEC with PCMCIA to a compaq laptop, results: stable, 4 to 5 MVs with 21 DSPs. worked.

Configuration 1: HP notebook with EC and duel adapter. Not wanting to splash out immediately for the EC34, and having also an RME PCMCIA, I ordered the duel adapter. results: This HP had Vista and, when in XP, was unable to load 32 bit cardus driver compatibility, so it didn't work.

Configuration 2: MacBook Pro, duel adapter with the PCMCIA, DEC chassis - the results were the same as with the PCMCIA - 4-5 MVs, but worked. No improvement, except for using a faster laptop to handle audio and vst.

Configuration 3: MacBook Pro, EC34, DEC chassis - results: this didn't work well at all. Lots of BSOD, very low MV count (sometimes hanging at 2(!), worst in all acounts than any other configuration.

Configuration 4 : Macbook Pro, EC34, Pericom chip - results : this was assembled on the table, because the new backplates do not fit older chassis. At a time, i was getting 6 MVs with 21 DSPs, but I felt unconfortable with having the scopes outside the case, and am still waiting for a replacement chassis to be able to test it well. Apparently, it works


So, important things to be known, that I have not covered (After all I am just one unpaid guinea pig):

- How do pc laptops cope with the EC34 and DEC chips? How does performance compare to the PCMCIA?

- How do DEC chips cope with PCI-E interface cards? And again - is it worth it?

These are the two configurations I cannot test. I do hope this is just one of those Mac-niggles, and that the EC34 and PCI-E interfaces work well with DEC chassis on a PC. I do have a couple of boxes i want to sell.

So, If you have the opportunity to try it out let us know the results, and I'll do the same if and when I get that chassis...

All the best, and good luck,

T

OK, I was re-reading this thread and I remebered one thing: are you using Scope in XTC mode?

Tau wrote:Hi there, kylie!

Sorry to hear about the PCMCIA. What problems are you having?

I don't see the chassis interface card. it detects the pcmcia card, and then tries to add the driver for the chassis card. the result is a device that is flagged yellow in the device manager and no additional pci devices.
I tried lots of stuff (recreating the file that is zeroed by the magma driver install routine and most tips from the faq, and trying 3 different notebooks - all intel based, all compaq/hp brand, all with ti cb chip, and different os, namely w2k and xp). I don't have a different pcmcia card to crosscheck if mine is broken. the chassis itself is fine, since it worked immediately after connecting it via pci.

I don't even know whether the pcmcia card and the cable I have don't match, although I expect no issue here, to be honest.

my intention to move from pci to pci-e is not exactly to get more bandwidth, but to free a pci slot and use one of that otherwise unused pci-e slots...

the pcmcia card was just a try to have the chassis usable with more than one computer, and the chance to use it with my notebook. maybe I should forget about that and sell the card while there is interest, and get me a card for mobile when I switch to a recent notebook with ec...

seems I better make an inquiry myself...

-greetings, markus-

hi tau, is the cb232 an pci extension with pericom chipset? and when i use the ec34 does it need to have a special cable?
if so do i need the special cable with ec34 and cb 264 too?
thx

helldriver wrote:hi tau, is the cb232 an pci extension with pericom chipset? and when i use the ec34 does it need to have a special cable?
if so do i need the special cable with ec34 and cb 264 too?
thx

I believe that the 264 is the pericom and the 232 is the older DEC (I think)... Visually, the newer ones have longer backplates (takes PCI and PCI-X), and there's a "P" logo on the chipset of the controller.

As for the silver cables, I was told that these were in fact necessary to use with the EC34 / Pericom combination. Didn't get a chance to try it with different cables, yet...


T

Helldriver, I got a message from magma letting me know the chassis is on its way, so next weekend I'll be able to try out the different cables / cards combinations.

T

I've got Magma CB234 and two Scope Pros working via EC34 and a EC to PCI-e card in the desktop. It froze in XP but seems pretty solid in Vista (with Scope loaded in XP compatibility mode). Next I will try upgrading my laptop to Vista. The fact that the Magma doesn't need drivers in Vista, and the fact that PCI-e is recognised by Vista directly may be the key. The fact that EC cards are hot-swappable in Vista may mean that any communication breakdown between the cards and the OS does not result in a freeze.

I believe my Magma has the DEC chips as the Device manager says DEC PCI to PCI bridge. I am using the original black cable designed for the PCMCIA host card.

You could ask why I didn't get the PCI-e host card for my desktop - basically I wanted to save money and be able to plug the Magma into my laptop or desktop quickly. Now I have a Scope system that won't require its own computer when PCI slots disappear altogether from motherboards. I certainly note a speed increase using new processor and RAM, so want to keep the Scope system attached to whatever computer I use, Let's hope the PCI-e interface sticks around for a while!

So my advice is give Vista a try if you are experiencing freezes

J

Jez:

That's very interesting information, and good news, I guess, for magma users. Thanks for sharing this. Could you also do a Masterverb test with your setups and post the results? If the PCI-E adpater to EC is acceptable in terms of performance, this may be "it".

The Pericom vs. DEC issue is still not very clear. For what I understand, you also had computer freezes using the Express Card+DEC with XP on the laptop, and that sort of confirms that there is a problem with this combination. If it does work with Vista, it will be quite ironic, but if the only way to use scope is to upgrade...

On the other hand, I have some great news on the Magma front as well! I finally have my new chassis, and have started to do some systematic testing. First MV results:
MacBookPro running XP, magma CB-264 (pericom), EC34:
- With one 15 DSP card, and no IRQ sharing, I can load 8 or 9 masterverbs (44.1KHz, ULLI= 7ms.) depending on the PCI latency setting. It once went up to 10, but had a strange error message (not PCI, some DSP thing with a lot of numbers). Usually it starts to complain about PCI bandwidth at 6 MVs, but will load up to nine
- With two 15 DSP cards, and sharing IRQ with the Serial ATA (my luck!) and Firewire, I have the same number of MVs, although it once did reach 10 MVs with 12ms ULLI latency. I guess this shows that 8-10 MVs is the maximum PCI bandwidth I can get on this system,.

I am also doing some more realistic tests with synths and FX at 48Khz, but I have to go through the results before I can post.

And Helldriver, I tried it with both cables, black and silver, and found no difference. It will be most interesting to find out the MV results for Vista, and the PCI-E to EC adapter...

See you all soon,

T

edit: I forgot to mention that, although MV results are the same for 15 or 30 DSPs, the poliphony count is completely different, and I can almost say it more than doubles using two cards. I have been playing around with it for almost two hours now, and no crashes, no freezes, and a lot of notes going... One thing to be particularly careful about is touching the EC card os the cable, as the slightest movement can cause XP to go BSOD... This afternoon, I'll start experimenting with ASIO and 3rd party devices.

Hi

Did the MV test. ULLI - 7ms, 6 MVs before message, 7 MVs before recurrent PCI overflow every time I try to add another synth.

Recap:
3GHz P4D, 4GB RAM, Windows Vista, Addonics ExpressCard PCI-e card
Magma CB264, DEC chips (I think), Black cable, EC34.

Cheers
J