# Anyone Familiar with RME Hammerfall cards?



## ejbragg (Dec 13, 2009)

I've got a hardware conflict I'm trying to resolve - everything was working smoothly until I connected a control surface to an older set-up using MIDI, for which the control surface didn't do so well. The newer outboard items really seem to like USB much more. Anyway, after experiencing some severe conflicts and crashes, I was eventually forced to wipe the hard drive and start over.

In the meantime, I upgraded from XP SP1 to SP3 (I'm not interested in upgrading to Windows 7 with this older computer - it runs quite fast on XP). Now when installing my RME Hammerfall 9652 ASIO card, I get another crash each time I attempt to insert the driver. The RME documentation says that their drivers use 64MB of memory; whereas, most computers allocate 32MB for ASIO drivers. My BIOS does find the card - it's certainly there, but I'm afraid the slot allocated is too small.

Anyone know about this problem?


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

Windows 7 will run just as fast as XP. Trust me on that. 7 is also muuuuch better with drivers.

The only reason I can think of as to why this is happening is an IRQ conflict, in which case you can uninstall one driver or the other, or both and re install one driver. If you have enough memory, you should be able to allocate just fine.


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## ejbragg (Dec 13, 2009)

Well, I found some buried comment on the driver CD that states that there is a known conflict caused by misallocation of memory space - but it's known to be in Windows 98 - not necessarily in XP. Whether it's caused by the operating system, or the system BIOS isn't clear. Both are mentioned. I checked the IRQs - this card has been given its own - at least it doesn't _seem_ to be sharing any interrupt request lines. The short explanation says that when memory allocation is too short, it overlaps with the space of another object and causes a crash when attempting to load the driver.... exactly the symptom I am experiencing. Another thing it _doesn't_ say is how to get around it.

Wait..... Alas! It's decided to work!

Nevermind, Astral, but thanks anyways.


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## spacedout (Dec 17, 2007)

Glad you're sorted! Just BTW, regarding updating to W7 - I believe that there may be no 64-bit support for that card (I seem to remember someone saying that he was told so by RME), so if you ever do decide to upgrade you may want to check that out first.


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

lol, I installed W7 on a like 2005 sony vaio (total ) and the speed at which it ran was actually shocking.


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## ejbragg (Dec 13, 2009)

spacedout said:


> Glad you're sorted! Just BTW, regarding updating to W7 - I believe that there may be no 64-bit support for that card (I seem to remember someone saying that he was told so by RME), so if you ever do decide to upgrade you may want to check that out first.


WOW. That's a handy bit of info! I HAD actually considered some upgrades. I have a dual pentium 3.8GHz, water-cooled, overclocked network station that is 64 bit capable, and I've been considering how to configure it. Presently, I've heard it said that most DAW software doesn't yet take advantage of the 64 bit capability, and that it doesn't necessarily buy any speed, latency, or headroom in this particular application type. I also have a UAD-1 card.... haven't looked into it, but I'm betting it would be the same.

I'll probably stick with the 32 bit configuration for now. I think it will suffice for a long time.

AstralPlane, in which application(s) did you see the improvement? Was it on your DAW?


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## spacedout (Dec 17, 2007)

As far as I can tell (and based on what I've heard), the main advantage of a 64-bit DAW is the ability to adress large amounts of RAM (i.e. more than 4GB), which is great when loaded huge amounts of sampled VSTi's. On the other hand, your plugins all need to be available in 64-bit versions as well, or else make use of some kind of bridge (with varying degrees of success). Your hardware also *all* has to have 64-bit drivers - no bridging available 

Cubase (which I use) has been available in 64-bit for a while now, but their bridge is apparently flaky... there's a program called JBridge which a number of people seem to be using with some success. VSL have recently released Vienna Ensemble Pro, which (as far as I understand) provides hosting of 32 or 64 bit plugins/instruments within a DAW - and said plugins can be either on the host machine or another one on a network. Costs around ten times as much as JBridge though...

HTH


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

ejbragg said:


> AstralPlane, in which application(s) did you see the improvement? Was it on your DAW?


The older machine I installed W7 on wasn't mine, it was my cousin's so there wasn't any audio involved.

Now on MY machine, I've had nothing but improvements. I love W7 10x more than XP. Memory addressing is better, programs run and open much more smoothly, too many improvements to list them all.

Then again I'm using the 64 bit version on mine, 32 bit on cousin's. Regardless, I've been in PC repair too long to know when things are finally right in OS world and W7 is pretty much it.

If one were to install W7 with nothing but the bare minimum and not a ton of plug ins on a standard dual core machine or even single core, I'd say no matter what your system config it runs nearly as sharp and fast as redhat linux.

I think the vaio was a single core with like 1gb of ram or something. Ran like a butterfly .


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## ejbragg (Dec 13, 2009)

Well, I don't want to bash Microsoft, although I'd love to, sometimes. But I'm hoping they eventually learn their lesson about how quickly they release stuff. Glad to hear that W7 is so clean and sturdy.


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## immortalgropher (Feb 16, 2010)

Vista was just a way to cheat people out of some money, they had 7 pretty much done a long time ago, vista was a way to get rid of any unforeseen bugs lol. Stupid business practice yet it kind of makes just s teeny amount of sense.


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