Any Asus P4B533-E DAW's out there?

[tranceisnotdead]

Hi!

I have a few questions for those kind enough to help.

After all the great help on this forum, I am now constructing a DAW (my first effort)using the following:

- Asus P4B533-E
- Intel P4 2.4B GHZ 533FSB
- MAXTOR 20.0GB EIDE ULTRA-ATA 133 for the OS
- WD 120GB WD1200JB for the noise files
- KINGWIN KF-21 removable HD bays
- MATROX MILLENNIUM G550
- 2 x KINGSTON KVR266X64C25/512 512MB PC2100
- Philips 40x12x48 (PCRW4012/17)
- ENERMAX FS-710B tower with 330W enermax power
- Samsung 152T (DVI) and a 151V (analog) screens
Everything except the CDRW (BestBuy $69)and the 151v ($349)was purchased and picked up at mwave.com (even cheaper than Newegg.com for this order)

For audio interface the Echo Layla24 with Cubase SX on XP pro.

This mobo has 6 USB2.0, 2 Firewire, SPDIF in and out, LAN, Game Port that has MIDI in and out, and 4 IDE inputs (1 set with RAID capability)

Befor I turn this one on for the first time........Questions:

1. Is there a anything wrong with using the primary RAID capable IDE as a master for the Maxtor boot/OS drive, as they are both ATA133?

2. I was thinking of having the WD1200 as a master on the Primary IDE, and the CDRW as a master on the secondary IDE. Any issues with this in conjunction with 1?

3. Would there be any reason not to use the MIDI in and out from the board's game port?

4. Would there be any reason not to use the board' SPDIF out into a Denon AV Receiver 3802 that has 24bit/96Khz analog devices DA converters for monitoring using B&W 601S3 speakers.

5. Is it better to use the SPDIF OUT from the board or the Layla24? Or is there no difference?

6. Any reason not to use the SPDIF IN as another input into Cubase SX?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers!

 

[Opus2000]

It's not recommended to use RAID as your boot up device. It will not properly function like you would want it to. There is no performance gain or any increased finctionality in using it. Use the main Primary controller for your OS drive and set the CDR/W to slave off of that.
I would leave the WD drives to themselves to get optimum performance. Remember that the only way to get good performance from RAID is to do a striped data. Also remember that since it's only striped and not mirrored if one drive goes down you lose half of your data. If you choose Striped and Mirrored you lose performance.
The onboard game port actually caused a friend of mine's system to go haywire and lose the USB functionality. So I would venture to say that using that is a no no. I would say to use the Midi ports on the Layla. As well as the SPDIF. The less you use on the mainboard the better as that will allow other cards or features to work smoother.
The less complicated you make it the better.
You will only be able to use the Layla inputs and not multiple inputs from other sources as that is the limitations of ASIO based applications.
Opus

 

[tranceisnotdead]

How do you do it Opus? Thanks for the speedy feedback. I will go and switch the IDE's right now. Seems a shame not to use that whole extra pair of IDE's though.

Cheers!

 

[tranceisnotdead]

Hi Opus,
On the above DAW, I have a harddrive with Windows 2000 from my laptop that I installed in a removable bay. However, when swapping the Maxtor that has XP OS on it, with the 2000 laptop drive and rebooting, either nothing happens or a "NTLDR is missing" error comes up and nothing boots.

Am I being silly here in thinking I can just physically swap the boot drives and it should work?

 

[Opus2000]

Huh???? Is there some type of adaptor that allows a laptop drive to be put into an IDE removable bay system? If so that's pretty cool but the question of why?
Usually it's not recommended to just put a drive into a new system. The reason being is this.
When you install an OS it reads the BIOS and any chipset and other components of a specific system and when you switch systems it looks for the old components and will not work properly. So basically, yes, you are correct in assuming that you are silly

 

[tranceisnotdead]

Hey Opus,

There is a 44pin to 40 pin and 12V to 5V adaptor that you can pickup at Fry's for $6.99. Works like a charm. The reason for my desire...to keep my internet connection/game playing, multi program installed drive, as the laptop is old, slow and bugging me. But M$ has apparently made this switching bootable drives across systems impossible to do on 2000 and XP.

My next action is to buy another harddrive, and try to move the files to the new drive and cross my fingers to see what works. $%#@*&!

All this to keep the internet etc from touching the DAW, but be able to use the same machine.

Thanks for your help. It looks now that I should have gone for the P4B533-V huh?

 

[Opus2000]

laptop to desktop adaptor....pretty cool! But, as I mentioned it's not something that's really doable since it was installed on a different type of machine...BIOS, registry and hardware differences cause major issues! Most people have to do a fresh install to get it to work properly.
Remember, I do have internet capabilities on my audio machine, granted it's through a FireWire card on my home network setup but it's flawless. I do all my internet surfing on my server machine but I can easily get any downloads/updates from my audio machine in a flash plus I can share files with the two other machines as well.
Audio runs just as good.
Yes, The V model would have been better.
Opus