Keeping Up To Date; Error Messages - Merging Pyramix User Manual

Troubleshooting is always a moving target as users discover ever more exotic ways to use Pyramix. Therefore, this
section is necessarily historic.
If the answer to your problem cannot be found here or elsewhere in the documentation, for the latest information
please consult the FAQ sections at:
http://www.merging.com
If you need further technical support, please e-mail
support@merging.com

Keeping Up To Date

Acquiring and installing regularly the latest Drivers/Firmware/Bios or Operating System available for equipment
such as: Graphic Cards, CD/DVD writers, Network Adapters, Motherboards, (but exercise especial caution), external
drives, RAID controllers and other third party hardware add-ons, will ensure that your system will always perform
as efficiently as possible. Always accept any 'rollback' options, just in case the driver updates have unforeseen con-
sequences.
Keeping Windows (and DirectX) up to date with latest service packs is also, in general, a positive move towards
maintaining a healthy system.
Note: These operations are not required for Mykerinos and Daughter cards simply
because the latest firmware for your hardware (if any) is automatically installed by the
most recent Pyramix installer.

Error Messages

PCI Bus Too Slow
PC motherboards are by no means equal. Real-time intensive activities such as those found in audio and video
workstations show up inadequacies unlikely to be noticed in more mundane applications. Even though one might
expect the newest, ever faster Pentium or AMD processors to give better performance this isn't always the case. At
least with respect to how well they handle the transfer of data over the PCI bus on which the Mykerinos board(s)
resides.
Audio is requested or handed over on the PCI bus every 1.3ms. When the request (interrupt) is delayed for more
than 20%, in this case 0.26ms, the first warning message will pop up, indicating a timing inconstancy of the PCI
sub-system. There are two levels of warning with "PCI Bus too Slow" messages; </= 20%, which relates to a serious
but not necessarily critical situation and the </= 50% which would result in drop outs in audio playback or record-
ing or other unwanted artifacts and you want to make absolutely sure you will not get any of these showing dur-
ing playback or record. But if you were to get a warning when opening a project, creating or rebuilding a mixer or
when launching Pyramix this, while still a sign of possible timing issue in the PCI communication at this very
moment, would only bring minor inconvenience at a non critical instant and would, nonetheless, allow you to
work perfectly safely.
Historically, we have observed the PCI Bus too slow messages to occur with the following hardware combinations:
• In the design of older firmware for the Southbridge 686B of VIA based motherboards.
• On non-Intel motherboards using the Intel 84x chipsets (in particular the Intel 845 series supporting the
Pentium 4 processors). The reason for this is that the 84x series gives absolute priority to PCI writes over
PCI reads.
• On some Dual Xeon motherboards, using multiple PCI controllers with PCI-X slots.
PCI performance can be affected by a combination of different parameters and add-on cards such as specific com-
binations of Raid adapters, Graphics adapters, Dual processors and PCI-X slots.
Upgrading a component's BIOS/driver/firmware or even the operating system will often fix some early limitations
or conflicts with a particular PC component. As an example switching from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro
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