No MOTU PCI card not found - Well, why not?

[larrytheo]

For years now, I have fairly regularly run into the problem that the PCI-424e driver seems to not load correctly. After booting my interfaces and then my Mac (though it actually doesn't seem to matter which order I boot them in), I'll try to open DP and it will complain about the driver configuration, at which point it throws up the Hardware Config dialog which makes it clear the PCI-424e card is not being seen.

If I boot up MOTU PCI Audio Setup, I'll get a dialog saying "MOTU PCI card not found." More often than not, rebooting the computer fixes the problem, but I have had a number of times it has taken multiple reboots, and more than once I couldn't get it to see the card until I did a cold boot (shut down and then restart).

I would hazard a relatively uninformed guess that some conflict is occurring as various drivers are loading at bootup, or maybe the MOTU PCI driver is, for some reason, not getting loaded at all.

In any event, it's darned annoying.

To the best of my knowledge, I have the most recent driver and setup utility, though the setup utility does not have a version number in its Get Info window.

Does anyone else see this? Any idea what's going on or how to fix it?

Thanks!

Larry the O

[1nput0utput]

How long have you had this PCIe-424 card? Did you use it in an older machine before installing it in the Mac Pro you have now?

[larrytheo]

I upgraded to the PCI-424e because I got the Mac Pro, so it was never in any other machine. I've had the card since September '06.

Why? Was there some hardware change to the card that might impact this problem?

[Dave Bourke]

May be worthwhile browsing this thread:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=18837

Kind regards.

[larrytheo]

Thanks for the suggestion, but there wasn't much help for me there. For a start, most of the people in that thread are talking about the interface not seeing the PCI-424e, whereas my problem is that the Mac itself (i.e. MOTU PCI Audio Setup) says it does not see the card.

I long ago tried reseating the card, moving it to a different slot, trying different cables, and trying different ports on the card.

Maybe I'll plunge in and try running the problem past MOTU tech support.

Thanks!

[monkey man]

You never know, Larry - MOTU may well ask you to send the card in for replacement should it deem all the usual troubleshooting routes satisfactorily investigated. IMHO, that would be the appropriate course of action, and not, I believe, one that MOTU hasn't pursued previously.

[Dave Bourke]

Thanks for the suggestion, but there wasn't much help for me there. For a start, most of the people in that thread are talking about the interface not seeing the PCI-424e, whereas my problem is that the Mac itself (i.e. MOTU PCI Audio Setup) says it does not see the card.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, Larry. MOTU PCI Audio Setup is the software that communicates with and controls the audio interface. To find out whether the Mac itself registers the presence of the card you need to launch System Profiler and check out the "PCI Cards" entry.

Kind regards.

[larrytheo]

What I meant was that if no interface was being seen, I would have expected an error message that said something like "No compatible audio interfaces have been found," rather than one that said "No MOTU PCI card found," which, to me, indicates that it is not seeing the PCI card, much less any interface. Perhaps it's just a badly worded error dialog and when it says "PCI card not found" it actually means "no interfaces were found."

Since you made the excellent suggestion of checking System Profiler, I thought I'd take a look at that. The result was interesting. Before doing so, I opened MOTU PCI Audio Setup to see if the card/interface was being seen. Rather than either showing the settings or giving the error dialog I described (the two situations I typically see), it did a third thing: it came up with the regular configuration dialog, but with no settings shown and no interfaces available in the Configure Interface drop-down menu.

Despite this being a different symptom, I thought it might be enlightening to see what System Profiler had to say. It said that it was seeing an audio card in slot 2 (where the PCI-424e is), and names it as "pci137a,5". So, while it identifies the video card as an NVIDIA GeForce, it does not seem to get any identifier of as a MOTU card, or have the model number (although "137a" is shown as the Vendor ID). I have no idea if this is normal or not, but I will recheck what it says after the next reboot when the card appears to show up normally and compare.

[Dave Bourke]

Yes, that's how mine shows up in System Profiler as well, so I presume it's normal for a MOTU PCI-424e. I say this because my UAD-1 card fully identifies itself as a UAD-1 Studio Pak PCIe card.

That said, since your Mac seems to be seeing the card all right, this would appear to indicate a software problem, specifically MOTU software. So perhaps you might consider a reinstall?

By the way, does AudioMIDI Setup Utility see the card?

Kind regards.

[larrytheo]

I've done several reinstallations, most often as updates are released (this problem has persisted across several versions), but on occasions because I've experienced one or another kind of instability or problem that let me to suspect the possibility of driver problems.

I've been trying to solve this problem for a while!

When I get the "No PCI card found" error, Audio/MIDI Setup reverts to Built-In and does not show the PCI-424e as an available option. And my UAD-1 card is identified generically, like the PCI-424e, not by name, in System Profiler.

I'm gathering that other people haven't seen this problem, which would lead me to believe it is something in my system, but it software or hardware.

Thanks!

[larrytheo]

OK, I had the "No MOTU PCI card found" problem again, and this time I opened up System Profiler, which does NOT show the PCI-424e. It does, however, show the UAD-1 card.

I'm going to go ahead and try MOTU Tech Support and I'll report back on what they say.

Have a happy T day, everybody!

[echohaus]

I'm going to go ahead and try MOTU Tech Support and I'll report back on what they say.

We'll see you in two weeks!!!

[reeper]

I'm going to go ahead and try MOTU Tech Support and I'll report back on what they say.

We'll see you in two weeks!!!

scary pic

[monkey man]

He looks intelligent to me; I'd send that pic along with any emails to MOTU, just so they knew they were dealing with an intellectual heavyweight. LOL.

Sorry. Carry on.

[stephen1212b]

I have had this problem on and off for years. The problem would rear its head often after a fatal crash caused by something else. Upon restarting the PCI card is not recognized. The only reliable solution was to pull and reseat the card then restart the computer. Which slot didn't really matter. One suspicion was that if the metal slot cover that is attached to the card was slightly out of alignment the act of locking it down with the set screw would tension the card in the slot and this could lead to intermittent connections. For a while I didn't screw the card in place and though it helped, but now I simply log out and put the computer to sleep without ever rebooting if I can help it. No problem for several months.