Found one! An ADS Firewire card with the TxI chipset. Anywhoo! Hit me with the info. What slot should I put this new bad boy into?

Hey what do you know we made it to page 2. I must say this post should end up as the ultimate resource for the Intel 915PBL. All thanks to USNBRENDON.

ORIGINAL: Bungee

OK Here is the big update. I started from scratch as I stated in my e-mail with a new firewire card and set everything up the way you had instructed. I got Sonar to open the first time and profile the MOTU which it did faster than it did before. I then went and enabled Multi-processor support and now it won't open anymore. Are you F*&$%ng kidding me? I'm about ready to bust out my 4-track at this point.

When Sonar will not open if the MOTU is on now. WTF? If I try to open it, it fails to open and then SONARPDR.exe is hung in Task Manager. If I power down the MOTU Sonar then opens up. OK And now when I hook up the Motu to my laptop it is acting all quirky. Maybe it's the Motu unit?? Why would it work sporadically? I am so at a loss right now it isn't funny. ALL I WANT TO DO IS MAKE MUSIC!!!!!!!

Hey got your email, and responded to it. You are right on the money with your thoughts about the ATI Radeon software being overkill and bloating startup and registry.....as I mentioned, unless you have a specific reason, ie., multiple monitor configuration, then the Catalyst and Hydravision crap is just plain overkill and unnecessary. Just use the certified drivers via Windows update, they'll provide you with stable native resolution of 1280x1024, which works perfectly with SONAR.

Get all your audio drivers on that system....make sure the latest drivers are downloaded from each vendor, and worry about less essential things like video later.

I answered your questions about RAID, and of course much of that is subjective, and you kinda have to determine what is right for you!

Now, I am going to ask you.......enabled multi-processor support WHERE.....and WHY??

I need to understand why you made that choice, and if you are thinking that the EM64T enabled 640 P4 is considered a mulit-processor core. Although XP will see the 640 as two discreet processors and even show it as such in the Device Manager, you must be aware, that is only for Hyper-Threading purposes. That processor is NOT a true-dual processor chip. So, unless I misunderstood where you were headed with that, then you need to disable that feature, as it WOULD cause an immediate crash or SERIOUS instability and THEN a crash.

get back to me, and I'll keep checking in on this thread, and my email. Also, I'll log into MSN messenger, so if you need, you can see if I'm at my computer by looking for me ....using the same email address you have been using. I'll be in and out, but I want to help you get this situation resolved before the weekend is out!

Take care, and so far, you are thinking about things correctly....you have the right logic, and I can tell that you are really sinking your teeth into the informaiton I have provided. Glad to be of assistance.

Okay, as for the PCI card placement, provided slots 2&3 are not populated, then you should place that card in 6 or 7. Bear in mind, I am numbering from top to bottom, with the 16x PCIE Graphics bus as slot 1. Then you have 2 PCI (conventional slots) followed by 2 1xPCI slots, and then 2 more PCI conventional slots. If you notice in the device manager that the firewire add-in card is sharing resources with another device and swapping slots causes Windows to shift the resources to a better selection, then by all means move the card. Since precious digital audio will be moving through that card at very high speeds, keep any unnecessary power cables, SATA interconnects, fan cables, et al, as far from the firewire card as possible. You don't want to induce unwanted noise into the card from nearby sources, that will only cause you serious grief. Also, as a sidenote, if you are NOT using onboard firewire, disable it in BIOS, remover the rear and front headers from the jacks on the motherboard and do the same with any unused additional USB breakouts. If your BIOS does not allow you to turn off the onboard firewire to save resources, then be sure to disable the IEEE hub in device manager so that IRQs aren't being reserved for devices you aren't even using. Do this for everything, including any unused COM ports and even the floppy disk controller if you don't use it. You'll be amazed at how many of your system's resources are freed, and how few devices will have to share an IRQ!

Catch ya soon....and you better have some good news for me!