Firewire driving me crazy !!

This time I'm really getting confused. I have finally bought that Adaptec Fireconnect 4300, which is VERY expensive for what you get, and I still get the *exact* same -6089 and -6085 errors... I have chaged the cable, and it's just the same. I feel deeply sad today. My problem is I can't do anything under 512 H/W buffer length. Simply impossible. Heeeeeeeeeeelp ! My computer : ASUS P4PE motherboard PIV 2,53 GHz 1 Gig RAM 266 Mhz Adaptec 29160N SCSI controller 2 SCSI hard drives (IBM & Maxtor) 10.000 rpm I have tried many things I've seen in the various threads about the subject, but nothing helped : although I run 29 tracks at the DaveC test, it's impossible to play or record EVEN ONE with 256 samples of buffer length. Is this hell ? Yann

No other PCI cards besides FW and SCSI correct? Hows your IRQ's look in BIOS post screen? Reason I ask: Had similar issues lowering buffer until weeks later I disabled this Audigy2 card in device manager and cured all, now able to use 64 buffer @24/48 128 buffer @24/96, FW card had nothing to do with it, had bought 2 extra ones for nothing...lol oh, and by the way, set your pagefile.sys to 1024 min/max on C:\ drive only.

I prefer to toss the pagefile out alltogether. Are you unable to use the lower buffers when recording to one of your scsi's? Have you tried working with an IDE drive for audio to see if there is any difference. Also, what do you need the firewire for? Is it a 002 thing, or an external drive thing?

Yeah I have the 002-rack, that's why I need Firewire. I also have an IBM IDE Hard Drive, and I have just tried it (my system is still on SCSI) : nothing changed... About the pagefile.sys, I had already tried that one with 512 Mb alltogether. I'll try with 1024 only for C: and will report in some minutes, with my IRQs... Thanks guys !

You have a gig of ram and therefore don't need a pagefile at all! I wouldn't use one as the system can really bog down if it decides to really start cranking on the page file. Also, scsi might be presenting you with probs. The driver probably has gobs of options to choose from. I use adaptec scsi adapter at work (although I really have only been using firewire lately). I'll let you know how the options are set on my system when I get a chance to look at it. Also, how old are your SCSI's? I've noticed major performance decreases in mine over just a few short years of extreme use.

Do you mean I could actually set my pagefile to zero ?? I'll give it a try. It's been maybe two and a half years since I have bought my SCSI system, and it works like a charm, or well it used to... The SCSI drive I'm recording on is 3 months old, and it's very fast. No problem ever with the DIGI 001. About my computer again : I also have one Plextor SCSI CD/R, one Yamaha SCSI CD/RW, one Realtek PCI RTL8029 for Internet, and a NVidia Geforce 2MX. My IRQs (I'll translate from french) : Serial Bus Controller : 4 Serial Bus Controller : 5 Serial Bus Controller : 3 Serial Bus Controller : 11 IDE Controller : 14/15 Display controller : 4 Storage Controller : d9ma Network Controller : 10 Serial Bus Controller : 9

With 512M or more of memory, setting pagefile to zero works fine, I've never gotten an 'out of memory' error, which would be the result if the pagefile was really needed. There is NO negative impact from setting pagefile to 0, as long as you have sufficient ram installed to cover the needs of your applications. Even running PTLE, sampleTank and Reason I haven't used up all of 512M yet, though I'm sure I could, if I load up a lot of samples in ST and Reason. If you had 384M or less, I'd say you'd definitely need to have the pagefile enabled.

OK, I have set the pagefile.sys to zero, and you were right : everythings looks perfectly the same as before... But I'm afraid nothing improved, which means I still can't have any buffer size under 512 samples without getting a "great" -6085 or -6089 error. The guy I contacted at Digi in France just said 6089 errors had never been seen on the PC, only on the Mac ! By the way, is it normal that Windows XP recognizes my Adaptec Fireconnect as a Texas Instrument IEE 1394 OHCI compatible controller ? I've been on Adaptec's site, and it's impossible to download any driver for this one at all ! Yann "Each time I thing I'm smart, my computer proves me wrong."

I think I have disabled almost everything I could, I even tried to change the SCSI IRQ to 7 (just to try...). Nothing could make it work. A question though : how can my system make 29 tracks on the DaveC test (buffersize=1024) and not work with a single track and no plug-in at all with middle-sized buffers ? AAAAAAAAAArgh ! Yann