Re: SCOPE PCI Motherboard/CPU Recommendations
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:15 pm
Hi there,
Just in case others are going through the issue of trying to find a pc which has enough pci stability to run creamware cards (pulsar , luna etc)...
I tried various "modern" pc's with so called native pci but always got the pci overload errors whenever i did anything more than play one synth, with no asios.
After a lot of researching and recommendations from some long time scope users, i found an old, but in excellent condition, hp xw6000 server / workstation (2 x Xeon 2.8Ghz with 2GB of new kingston ram, an onboard 36gb scsi disk, a 160gb ide, a 512 mb radeon agp card and best of all, 4 "proper" pci slots & NO PCI EXPRESS (so no horrible pci bus sharing..) for 40 Euros !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..yep, i did say 40 EUROS !!
I had to only update the bios, install win 7, scope and my daw, hook up to analogue mxing desk, and wahaaay ! My Pulsar 2 and Luna cards with full synth packs are now working brilliantly again, and not a single error so far (2 datys running / testing). The best thing of all is as the machine is pre efi, and is actually a server, you can manually alter irq assignments if you have any conflicts with any other devices.....The things is also built like a tank compared to a normal desktop.
SO, to cut a long story short, if you want to have a machine to keep your pci creamware / sonic core cards alive and kicking, go look on ebay and get yourself a 2nd hand hp xw series with twin xeons and no pci express and you will be laughing !!
See pics and happy scoping !
Just in case others are going through the issue of trying to find a pc which has enough pci stability to run creamware cards (pulsar , luna etc)...
I tried various "modern" pc's with so called native pci but always got the pci overload errors whenever i did anything more than play one synth, with no asios.
After a lot of researching and recommendations from some long time scope users, i found an old, but in excellent condition, hp xw6000 server / workstation (2 x Xeon 2.8Ghz with 2GB of new kingston ram, an onboard 36gb scsi disk, a 160gb ide, a 512 mb radeon agp card and best of all, 4 "proper" pci slots & NO PCI EXPRESS (so no horrible pci bus sharing..) for 40 Euros !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..yep, i did say 40 EUROS !!
I had to only update the bios, install win 7, scope and my daw, hook up to analogue mxing desk, and wahaaay ! My Pulsar 2 and Luna cards with full synth packs are now working brilliantly again, and not a single error so far (2 datys running / testing). The best thing of all is as the machine is pre efi, and is actually a server, you can manually alter irq assignments if you have any conflicts with any other devices.....The things is also built like a tank compared to a normal desktop.
SO, to cut a long story short, if you want to have a machine to keep your pci creamware / sonic core cards alive and kicking, go look on ebay and get yourself a 2nd hand hp xw series with twin xeons and no pci express and you will be laughing !!
See pics and happy scoping !