NEW PCI-324 WDM Beta 5 Drivers Windows 98SE, ME, 2000!

[gy]

Sometimes, a little pissing and moaning helps get things done! If you try this driver, please post your results here. Please include your OS and chipset, etc.

http://www.motu.com/english/download/

[Bad Hat]

I actually just downloaded this driver for my 2408. I'm running SONAR, on a PIII 500Mhz. I did a bunch of tweaks at once, including a clean upgrade from 98SE to Win2K, went from 128 to 384 RAM, and gutted the motherboard of modems, my SB Live, and everything else except the MOTU324 Card, my SCSI Card and my Firewire Card. I have to say so far (I did the upgrade about a week ago) that my system has gone thru a miraculous improvement in latency, stability, and throughput. Again, unfortunately its hard to tell you exactly what did what, as I did it all at once, but was basically waiting till the drivers were released to do the Win2K upgrade. I was having tons of issues with SONAR before this including a complete inability to get my latency below about 30Ms, a nast drop out problem playing more than about 10 stereo tracks, and real issues with SONARs slip editing. Now I am running at 2.9 ms, with nary a glitch or drop out, and easily running about 25 stereo tracks with plugins. I attribute the improvement to a combo of the RAM, Win2K, and in no small way, to the WDM drivers. I reccomend the upgrade at this point, but probably only if you are running SONAR or another WDM compatible multitrack. (are there any others yet?)
Hope this helps
Chris J

[stormkloud]

I think Win 2K and WDM was the biggest reason for the improvement. I am down to 1.3ms latency! It is absolutley awesome
Storm

[Bad Hat]

I keep hearing the 1.3 number getting tossed around and am wondering if thats just folks with significantly faster processors than I have (PIII 500, as I mentioned above). I have no complaints with my 2.9ms, though as a point of personal pride I'm trying to assure myself that this is simply a physical limitation of a 2 year old computer, but even still, 2.9 DAMN!!!!! thats fast for me. I think between the WDM and the new features in SONAR, I'm actually happy to have stuck with Cakewalk for all theses years instead of jumping onto the Mac bandwagon. I think my faith has finally payed off. Having played extensively with the Digi001, I think I prefer my MOTU/SONAR rig. My only (continuing) complaint about Cakewalk is the damn nonsense names that it gives audio data files. If you cakewalk R&D guys read this, gimme some names I can make sense of in the wave data folder, its quite a pain in the ass. Beyond that however, I couldn't be happier.
Chris J

[gy]

I'm glad you guys are getting the PCI-324/2408 to work under Win ME and 2k. I would switch from 98se, but Gigasampler wouldn't work, plus a couple of other programs. I'm stuck, by choice with 98se. It's too bad that MOTU won't write drivers for 98. It also saddens me how they imply that their WDM drivers will for all operating systems. Very deceiving.

[RogerLons]

Actually, the beta drivers work well on 98SE. They won't work on the Original Win98, though. But 98SE works brilliantly. You will need an update for 98SE, though. Follow this link to the Microsoft site and get the patch. If that doesn't work, do a search for knowledge base item Q242937. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q242/9/37.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q242937&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98

Once the patch is installed, uninstall your old drivers and install the beta's. Been working like a charm for me. And if it doesn't work, youcan always uninstall and go back to the "old" MME drivers. Good luck.

[RogerLons]

Actually, the beta drivers work well on 98SE. They won't work on the Original Win98, though. But 98SE works brilliantly. You will need an update for 98SE, though. Follow this link to the Microsoft site and get the patch. If that doesn't work, do a search for knowledge base item Q242937.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q242/9/37.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q242937&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98

Once the patch is installed, uninstall your old drivers and install the beta's. Been working like a charm for me. And if it doesn't work, youcan always uninstall and go back to the "old" MME drivers. Good luck.

[RogerLons]

Sorry for the double post - technical difficulties...

[gy]

Roger,

My perdicament is, the orginal PCI-324 drivers with Sonar = 70ms latency. Unacceptable. When I installed this new BETA 5 driver and ran Sonar "Wave Profiler" my machine gave me a "blue error screen" and locks up. Are you suggesting that the Win 98se WDM patch might make this BETA 5 work, thus; bring latency down?

[Zimm]

I purchased a new PC 2mo.ago.With Motu 24i(of course with PCI324 card)Had Sonar(Cakewalk)and the pc had win 2k installed.Needless to say MOTU wasnt supported at that time Only win 95 & win98. I was you can imagine totally Pissed.

So I went out and bought the Win 98SE .One step ahead of myself figuring reg 98 wont do.
Made a fresh install-- found out the PC did not like PCI324 and another sound card with it (SB Live was installed at the time)
The PC has the following: 1.4 gig cpu., 788mb rdram, 400 bus, ATA Ultra DMA drives (2 40 gig)Sonar,and at present 98SE. Question, how do I get the new drivers to work from Motu, should I go back to win 2000(Bus ed)go to Win ME, Stick with win 98SE.
Next Question;How can I run the PCI324(Motu) and the SB Live on the same system. System Lockes up when both are installed.

Thanx so much

Zim

[gy]

See my post lower down the topic page.

MOTU 2408/PCI-324 & Win 98se

It sounds like your soundcards are fighting for resources. You will need to free up an IRQ for the PCI-324 to have it's own. You may have to get into the BIOS to do this. Good luck!

[RogerLons]

gy,

Yes, this is exactly the same behavior I saw before applying the patch (albeit with the beta4 drivers). As soon as the patch was applied, the drivers installed perfectly. I nopw have latencies in the 25ms range on a non-optimally tuned system - it had been over 150ms with the MME drivers! Try it - you've got nothing to lose.

[RogerLons]

Zimm,

Both cards should work under 98SE. You might need the WDM patch I recommended to gy as well; see above.

Also, as he stated, make sure that you're not in a hardware conflict mode these two cards do not like to share IRQ's with anything else if it's at all possible. With a plug and play OS like 98, the easiest way to change IRQ's is to move the card to a different slot. Never (and I do mean never) put an audio card in Slot 1 - it will always share the IRQ of the video card, and that's bad. Otherwise, your hardware vendor should be ablt to provide you with a list of what slots share which IRQ's - it's a part of the motherboard design. If you need another free IRQ, you can disable the SB DOS compatibility mode in Device Manager - the card always consumes two IRQ's unless you do this, and I'm assuming that DOS games aren't that important on a DAW :-)

One last thing. Creative has not published WDM drivers for 98SE/WinME. Believe me, I've asked. Repeatedly. They are Win2K only. So if you're planning to use MOTU for audio and the SB for MIDI, AND you want the low-latency WDM drivers for both, you need Win2K. Also, from everything I hear it kicks 98's ass for audio! I'm on 98SE but I'm almost purely audio so the lack of MIDI doesn't hurt too bad in the short term. I'm waiting for XP in the fall.

Good luck! I hope this helps!