P4C800-E Deluxe and On-Board Firewire-prolblem w/SB Audigy ZS Platinium Pro

[Einar B. Gilberg]

Hi!

I have read a thread concerning problems with the onboard firewire
connections on the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard here on this
forum. Nonetheless I would like to start this new thread.

I just recently built my own system:
P4 3,0GHz Hyoperthreaded
P4C800-E Deluxce
Consair PC3200 2x512MB RAM
2xWD RAPTOR 73,4GB in SATA RAID 0 (stripe)
ASUS 9600XT Video Card
Chieftec Aluminium Midi-tower
SB Audigy ZS Platinium Pro

I made this system for the purpose of (among others) video editing.
Using my Audigy I have hade no problems what so ever, but if I try
using the onboard firewire connection I get lost frames and crackles
in the sound.

My internal SB-card was on PCI slot 3, but thinking it might be an IRQ
problem with that slot I tried slot 4 (which is shared by the firewire
onboard-controller and thus i thought maybe would bring some conflict
with the firewire port on the external audigy). When I tried to
capture video with the onboard firewire-port everything worked fine -
but I had not connected the external Audigy box to the internal
Audigy-card. When I did that and installed the SB drivers once again
(I had to reinstall the drivers), the on-board firewire once again
skipped frames but the Audigy external box's firewire port had no
problems.

Later today, after some sleep, I will try to move the Audigy-card to
another PCI-slot - but I don't have too much hope it will work.

Do someone have any suggestions or solutions to my problem with the
onboard firewire connections? I remind you - with the external
audigy-box detached (or audigy drivers not available for the system)
the firewire ports seems to be doing great without any lost frames.

Practically speaking I'm very satisfied with my system and I can get
the work done by using my Audigy, but when I build a new system I
would like everything to work properly. So trying to figure out this
conflict has become somewhat important to me.

Thanks for your time.

Best regards,
Einar B. Gilberg
Trondheim, Norway

 

[David Waters]

Hi

I had a similar problem with the P4C800 Deleuxe (non-E, but I believe it
uses the same chip for firewire). I was using a SoundBlaster Live!
Platinum. Both onboard and PCI (Pinnacle) firewire interfaces lost frames.
I tried everything I could, changing drivers, moving various cards around to
change IRQ's, but without success.

Since I removed the SBLive and replaced it with an Audigy 2 ZS, I have used
the Audigy's firewire port 100% reliably. Not one frame missed.

I have given up on the onboard port. I followed this subject for months on
this newsgroup, and the microsoft video and moviemaker newsgroups. It's a
common problem with several Asus boards, and there doesn't seem to be a fix.

I suggest you use your Audigy's port if this works, rather than trying to
fix the fault. It's most likely that other devices will work fine with the
onboard port, if you need them. The problem with transferring video is that
it needs a CONSTANT stream of data, without missing a beat. Other devices
such as disks are happy to work asynchronously, and will just do a retry if
part of a transfer is corrupt, without you noticing.

I've decided to get on and enjoy editing, rather than pursue it further.

Regards

David

 

[David Waters]

Einar

I should have mentioned in my earlier posting -

My system is similar, but not identical, to yours. P4C800 Deluxe, 2x 512MB
Crucial PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro, 3.0GHz P4 which is using
Hyperthreading. 2x Seagate 120GB SATA disks in RAID0. I use these for
data. I also have a 120GB IDE disk for Windows XP, swap and applications.
I am reluctant to put everything on a RAID0 array, because of the increased
chance of failure - then you could lose everything.

As I mentioned earlier, so many people have reported problems on the P4C800
Deluxe, both '-E' and 'non-E'. There seems to be a fundamental flaw. You
may spend several weeks (as I did) trying to get it to work, without
success. If you do find a workaround, please post it to this newsgroup.

Good luck

Regards

David

 

[Noozer]

Einar

I should have mentioned in my earlier posting -

My system is similar, but not identical, to yours. P4C800 Deluxe, 2x 512MB
Crucial PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro, 3.0GHz P4 which is using
Hyperthreading. 2x Seagate 120GB SATA disks in RAID0. I use these for
data. I also have a 120GB IDE disk for Windows XP, swap and applications.
I am reluctant to put everything on a RAID0 array, because of the increased
chance of failure - then you could lose everything.

As I mentioned earlier, so many people have reported problems on the P4C800
Deluxe, both '-E' and 'non-E'. There seems to be a fundamental flaw. You
may spend several weeks (as I did) trying to get it to work, without
success. If you do find a workaround, please post it to this newsgroup.

LOL!

The only VIA part on the board and of course it doesn't work right. *sigh*

I would put a lot of blame on Creative's stuff though. They haven't been
able to properly design a soundcard for years.

As for a fix, try messing with the PCI latency settings in the BIOS.