Is it possible to run two PCI-424(X) cards in one System?

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 1:32 am

I can see by the title, I am likely to get a number of replies such as "Why would you want to???" Could we please cut that out of the discussion? I have spent an hour searching the board here only to get thousands of unrelated posts. So, does anyone know, is it possible for me to install a second MOTU PCI-424(x) card into the same system? No worries about number of slots, nor clock rates and bus address speeds/latency as that will be a non-issue in this system.

Has anyone tried this before - and if so did it end in success or failure? The obvious answer to why is more interfaces - Yeah even though we are running our card full of HD192's now. Hopefully that will help confine replies to merely - "I'm doing it" or we have all tried this and it does not work and there is no work-around..

Sorry hope and I am not coming off wrong, but I believe after several hours of my life I'll never get back from the useless search and advanced search functions here have made me a bit testy. lol Thank you all in advance for any help or guidance you can provide.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:25 am

Don't be testy. To my knowledge you can't use two cards to address multiple interfaces. Call MOTU tech support maybe?

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:05 am

I don't have time for that (calling support) unless MOTU has made a dramatic shift both in their very poor support response times as well as their knowledge and willingness to "come off" of any data. Last time I called was to solve a problem FOR THEM and they refused to get me to anyone but first level support and it took them several years to fix the driver goof that has existed ever since the PCI-324 was replaced by the 424.

If no one has any experience with this here, I'll either give it a try, or look for some alternative - which won't be too easy... hmmm....

FutureLegends · Post by **FutureLegends** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:53 am

As far as I know it's not possible.
I haven't tried, and have never seen the use of 2 or more PCI424 cards mentioned anywhere.

The only way I know to expand the number of inputs would be to use different intefaces for example 2408 and/or 24 i/o.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:26 am

Get up early and start dialing. In the meantime ill try and get a hold of someone I know there and ask. I highly doubt it though.

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:23 pm

OK, thanks; I have very serious doubts about it; that's why I thought I would post and see if anyone had any experience with doing so (running two cards...) simultaneously. Well the 24 I/O would double our I/O per HD192 Interface, but - I was never a very large fan of them in comparison to what we have done with our 192's and frankly now forget their specs and would have to look them up.

I was not trying to be testy in post one, sorry about that, but seriously my second post, is truly indicative of our experience with MOTU on several occasions; and too when it would have been to their advantage to listen and fix their own products' drivers. (Messed up power state map in drivers.)

I greatly appreciate everyone's patience and guidance on the matter. Sounds like from the post directly above (and this is sad too as they make some fine gear) that perhaps their famous second worse in class (only to Microsoft) support has not improved by leaps and bounds over the last few years.

I'll both give it a whirl if I can tonight and as well get on the horn Monday next week and will post back with a definitive answer, for perhaps it will be of some assistance to someone else later down the line.

Again was not trying to be a {censored}, but I am stretched pretty thin this weekend and perhaps still have a thread from GS ringing in my head where I asked for wholesale outlet options for patchbay, snakes and rack interconnect wiring for which that thread turned into "Well it does not matter - grounding is more important - and on and on..."15 pages I think and not a single vendor. LOL so I just did not want this thread to turn into a thread full of "why would you's" Sorry everyone for that and thanks in advance. I'll post back when I have an answer and or work-around if no answer is readily available.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:30 pm

dwire- Motu tech support has actually gotten much better over the last year or so via phone- less busy signals, more tech support etc.... Can it still be improved? Absolutely but it's way better than 3 or 4 years ago.

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:42 pm

Well that is good to hear - and yes everything can always get better - my post could have been so! lol 3-4 years ago is really when it (phone and email support) was on a par with Microsoft; perhaps worse, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (ad they DID finally find and fix the power state issue in their own driver - took well over a year, maybe more, but....)

It will be interesting to see what they have to say Monday. I just hope I can made it though to someone that has a definitive answer - via testing or knowledge of the drivers and software, not speculation(s). Thank you for your reassurance; I feel better about calling Monday now already.

Personally, I would guess for a possible IRQ conflict or memory mapping conflict, but who know maybe we can get lucky? Thanks!

torrentg · Post by **torrentg** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:27 pm

I would suspect that it would work well. In fact, you probably only have to install the driver for the first card...like if it is already installed, just have to physically install 2nd card, boot to Windows and it should be working straight away.

Windows will enumerate the device, see it already has a driver on the system for it that is well, and install it for you.

But true, I wouldn't go spending good money on a suspicion but rather would find out for fact first, as you are doing.

Good luck!

torrentg · Post by **torrentg** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:45 pm

I believe I've found something to go by:

The User Guide speaks of issues with less-than-high-spec machines and how to go about solving -

"This may happen if you have other PCI
cards installed and/or multiple MOTU audio I/Os."

Page 109: http://cdn-data.motu.com/manuals/pci-au ... de_Win.pdf

But do they mean multiple MOTU interfaces or multiple cards? I can't say for sure about that.

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:40 pm

To add to the repository of info here, in a word, "NO." Now that is not to say that perhaps if I swapped it around all over in the expansion bay or workstation, I might get "lucky" and find that it works one place or another, but I am doubtful, just as I was when I asked the question.

I think what surprises me more is the error message; not what I would have expected; "can't find drivers" yet when it has had zero problem(s) finding the drivers for the other card, so go figure on that one.

We have other solutions, that just seemed the simplest. Thanks everyone.

torrentg · Post by **torrentg** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:30 am

In device manager, right click it, Properties, Update driver software, Browse My Computer..., Let me pick..., Have disk, Browse

Double click on the driver's .inf file. Hit next, hit ok and it will install.

If it works is another question, though.

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:52 am

Yes, after 30+ years, I am aware of how to navigate Windows. And did just that. The "ONLY" thing I did not feel worth wasting the effort on was pulling the 11-slot expansion bay out 4 or 5 times to try different card slots. The way the MAGMA's work and assign IRQ's and allocate memory, they are far, far less likely to care where a particular PCI card is installed slot-wise; at least as compared to a MB.

I feel it highly unlikely that it is possible to work as I could by disabling one, re-run through the entire process, reinstall drivers and move everything to the second card - naturally the original card was then the one broken.

So, NO I feel confident in saying it will not work. Though, thanks for the suggestion, while I already had that covered top to bottom, maybe someone else reading your post with an unrelated issue might understand a bit better how Windows assigns IRQ and address space to peripherals.

torrentg · Post by **torrentg** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:54 pm

Windows would not tell you that it can't find drivers if you double click on the .inf when installing. It just would not happen.

You might want to check the hardware id of the 2nd card and compare it to what is in the driver's inf.

If there's a match (and there is not reason for there not to be) - the driver will install.

The only thing that can stop this is if MOTU designed it where the physical cards can not work together. In this case, the driver would still be installed, but have an error with startup such as code 10.

If I wanted, I could easily install a driver for an AMD or NVIDIA video card to it...or anything...obviously it woudn't work, but the driver still would be installed.

Code: Select all

[Version]
Signature=$CHICAGO$
Class=Media
ClassGuid={4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Provider=%MOTU%
DriverPacketDisplayName=%DISPLAYNAME%
DriverVer=11/09/2011,4.0.5.323
CatalogFile=motuaw.cat

[Manufacturer]
%MOTU%=DeviceList

[DeviceList]
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0003
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0004
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0005

[DriverInstall424.NT]
CopyFiles=DriverCopyFiles

[DriverInstall424.NT.Services]
AddService=MotuAW,2,DriverService

[DriverService]
ServiceType=1
StartType=3
ErrorControl=1
ServiceBinary=%12%\MotuAW.sys

[DriverInstall424.nt.hw]
AddReg=DriverHwAddReg424

[DriverHwAddReg424]
HKR,,FriendlyName,,%AUDIOWIRE% 
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Services\motuaw\Children,0,,mawwave

[SourceDisksNames]
0="MOTU PCI Audio Drivers"

[SourceDisksFiles]
motuaw.sys=0,

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir=12

[DriverCopyFiles]
motuaw.sys,,,2

;------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;  String Definitions
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Strings]
MOTU="MOTU"
AUDIOWIRE="MOTU PCI Audio"
DISPLAYNAME="MOTU PCI Audio Drivers"

[DeviceList]
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0003
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0004
%AUDIOWIRE%=DriverInstall424,PCI\VEN_137A&DEV_0005

dwire · Post by **dwire** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:16 pm

You do not merit much of a response. I hope you feel all impressed with that response after not comprehending my post. I would detail this better, but it is nearly a two hour process to install and remove from the bays and some of us around here work with audio, video and the like and have not the time to write up complex posts that will not fix the issue, nor will the vast majority of people understand.

You obviously missed the part where I said with both cards installed, I could enumerate one or the other, but not both right?

MOTUnation.com