problem with audio and Promise Ultra 133

natrin · Post by **natrin** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:38 pm

I need some help! I upgraded to a new hard drive (Seagate 160), and I figured that would be a good time to try out the Promise hard drive controller that everyone raves about. I got the new setup running ok, but there's a problem: my audio playback now stutters quite often when I perform other tasks (like clicking on the Start menu, or other simple stuff like that). Does anyone know how to fix this? The problem goes away if I switch the HDD to the IDE controller on the BP6.

My system is:
Win XP Home
BP6
1.1 GHz Celeron
Seagate 160 GB (UDMA 100)
Promise Ultra 133 TX2
640 MB RAM
SB Live!
3Dfx Voodoo 3000
Some generic modem

I did some searching and learned about PCI latencies, and I tried to adjust them using the DoubleDawg utility, but this didn't help. I await your wisdom! Thanks...

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:42 am

Check if IRQ's are being shared for the sound card or the IDE card. If so then change that. You can also try moving the cards to different PCI slots to see if that rearranges the IRQ's in any positive way.

natrin · Post by **natrin** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 11:34 am

Purrkur, I should have mentioned that I did that. Sandra reports no conflicts. SB is using 19 and Promise is using 17. Is it possible that the SB is using more than this? Maybe I will trying changing slots anyway. Thanks for your comment.

nullshark · Post by **nullshark** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:51 am

Hmm, make sure all drives are using DMA and not PIO mode? I've never used a controller card, so not sure how that affects the modes of IDE devices.

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 1:35 am

It may be the SBLive! and the simple fact that these cards and/or their drivers, do not play well with SMP. Some have said the DOS drivers/emulation should be (removed) "turned off".