serious freezing problem with Pulsar 1 hardware

pulsar1user · Post by **pulsar1user** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:47 am

hi folks,

I put my good old Pulsar 1 hardware (4 DSP) into a new computer. When putting audio or midi (or both) through Pulsar, my computer freezes sooner or later - be it after 1 minute or after 30 minutes.

Rarely Windows doesn't even recognise the Pulsar hardware after booting the computer. A Pulsar window pops up with a lot of serial numbers (no, I'm not using any illegal software).

When I unload the Pulsar software and instead run my onboard soundchip (with ASIO4ALL driver), I can work for hours without any freeze, everything is fine (beside the huge latency with onboard audio).

Does anyone have a clue what's wrong? Maybe some mysterious BIOS PCI settings?

Edit:

Sry, I forgot to mention my system specs
- Intel Core2 Duo
- Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Rev. (intel P965 / ICH8 chipset)
- Windows XP SP2
- Scope Fusion Software 3.1c

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:10 am

yes, a physically misplaced card can have such issues - it's often difficult to tell from just viewing at it. A very small (invisible) amount of tilt may cause unreliable PCI connections.
Bad (internally broken or partly damaged) connectors on the external cable whip are also a possible source of such trouble.
Some antivirus software is known to interfere with the protection scheme.

cheers, Tom

pulsar1user · Post by **pulsar1user** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:17 pm

To me, it looks like the card is perfectly plugged into the PCI socket. I checked several times and pressed the card down into the socket. It feels like a perfect fit. I tried the second PCI slot too (the third one is blocked by a HDD) with no success.

Possibly the cable whip is damaged. I got a loose connection regarding the analog OUT. Sometimes I need to move the cable in order to get both speakers playback the card's output.

A broken cable whip could really cause a windows machine to crash? That'd be kinda funny, don't you think?

no antivirus software is running on my audio system.

The device manager looks as if the card is properly installed. I will go back and check the Scope Fusion Software 4.0 though I haven't had any problems with 3.1c on the other compuert.

Thank you so far for your suggestions.

Post by **garyb** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:14 pm

a broken cable whip WILL make problems....

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:47 am

pulsar1user wrote:...A broken cable whip could really cause a windows machine to crash? That'd be kinda funny, don't you think? ...

you better not ask me about my opinion regarding 'Windows' programming, let alone it's reliability... imho it's more funny that the sh*t is kinda running at all

anyway, a damaged ground line/shield of the digital IOs can 'irritate' the main clock oscillator or even bring it down completely. But all low level audio drivers rely on exactly that clock... and as that's priviledged code (so to say) it will drag the whole machine down

that's also a good example why all that memory protection blurb is essentially nonsense - you can protect the OS from application code running mad, but once an app initiates a 'mad' driver call, off you go ...

in that grey, in that blue shade - my tears dry on their own *

cheers, Tom
* quoting favourite Amy

pulsar1user · Post by **pulsar1user** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:51 am

Thank you astroman, that might make sense. Isn't Windows a great operating system?

I've read in another thread (urgent help please! bluescreen / scope issue) about dirty pci contacts so I cleaned them up, moved the HDD and tried the third - and last - PCI slot.

Well, so far it works. Haven't had the time to check for hours though. Keeping fingers crossed.