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HELP! Now this is totally weird?!

chumbo

Member
I installed a (Mackie) UAD-1 on an Asus P4P800-E Deluxe but when I boot the PC, my screen stays black!! No Bios, nothing. Just two beeps from the motherboard. I don't even know what they mean since it's not documented in the MB manual, grrr! :(
For info, I even tried every PCI slot on the MB and even removed every other card (Matrox & RME sound card) and with only the UAD-1 in the MB, still get the beeping (used to be 3 beeps, now it's 2)

The UAD-1 was brand new so I had never tried it so I suspected it might be defective and I tried it in another shitty PC with a PCChips MB and the same thing happened: black screen, but followed by loads of MB beeps.

I finally decided to try it in one last PC that was around, an Asrock MB, and...it worked!! Booted, and tried the card with some plugins and it works fine.
So...HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT ONE!? and is there a solution??
Please help, don't know what to do next :(
Cheers,
Chumbo
 

secretworld

Active Member
Sometimes it´s just bad contact (I hope for you) Just try it a few times reseating it every boot that fails. My voodoo 3 was terrible in this respect.
 

chumbo

Member
Thanks for the suggestion but I'm afraid that's really not the problem. I must have inserted and removed the card at least 8-10x and it has NEVER worked once in the P4P800! :(
Chumbo
 
chumbo said:
Thanks for the suggestion but I'm afraid that's really not the problem. I must have inserted and removed the card at least 8-10x and it has NEVER worked once in the P4P800! :(
Chumbo
That's weird... I've got two uad's working on an Asus P4P800 deluxe board without just a single problem for about two 2yrs. :eek:
Did you modified the BIOS settings on other params like boot device, disk etc...? How about doing a reset to default values and just setting necessary entries for boot device, disk etc? Or get in contact with UA support....
 

secretworld

Active Member
Do you have 4 gigs of ram?? If yes that could be the issue, first try with only one ram stick
 

jcat

Active Member
Remove all unescisary hardware and try (including soundcard, xtra memory etc), if it boots with minimal and the UAD-1 then just start adding stuff back in one thing at a time untill you finds the conflicting piece.

If it still dosn't work with just minimal hardware then try swapping out the graphics card, it may be conflicting with the UAD-1 for some reason.

Hope that helps a bit.


Cheers,

jcat
 

chumbo

Member
Thanks to everybody for the replies!

Let me just go directly to what secretworld said as I think he might be on to something:
Do you have 4 gigs of ram?? If yes that could be the issue, first try with only one ram stick
WOW! Now that is interesting because YES, I do have 4 Gb of RAM! I'm not in front of my music PC right now but that's the first thing I'll try. But I imagine there are other users with a P4P800 that have 4Gb in their PC and it works, right? I hope! :|
I'll post back the result of the possible RAM issue later today. If that doesn't solve it, I'll look in to all the other suggestions here in the thread and report back on those as well.

For info, I tried the UAD-1 in a 4th PC and it booted, so it's definitely looking like it's the PC rather than the UAD-1 that has the problem. Although, just to make things a little weirder and annoying, as I mentioned at the top here, I also ran into the same problem on some other shitty little PC with a PCChips MB! That is strange?!
Cheers,
Chumbo
PS thx for the support guys! nice community we have here ;)
 

neil wilkes

Venerated Member
I have heard of PCChips Mobos not playing nice before too. They are often based on SiS chipsets.

As for the memory settings, when using DDR-RAM, there can be serious parity issues if you are running in DDR mode and not using matched sticks in the correct slots.
In my ASUS PC-DL Deluxe, it loads up in alternate slots first.
With 4Gb (I only have 2Gb) all 4 slots will be full. Are all 4 sticks the same brand? If not, then slots 1 & 3 should be identical, and so should slots 2 & 4.

What make is your BIOS?
Beep codes can differ depending on BIOS manufacturer - AMIBIOS is not the same as AWARD. However, AFAIK only AMI BIOS has a beep code where there are just 2 short beeps.
The parity error means that there is a fault in the first 64K of RAM.
The RAM is probably defective, or not installed correctly.
Solution is to try & reseat the RAM, clean the terminals, or install it in the correct pairings if brands are different.
Failing that - it's the mobo going west on you.
 

chumbo

Member
Ok, I think the problem is clearly with the 4Gb of RAM. I tried what secretworld suggested and...it works! With only one stick of RAM, I have no problem and running in dual channel with 2Gb of RAM works as well. I haven't tried with 3Gb because the Asus manual is a bit confusing on that and seems to imply that it's not implemented. I also switched the pairs while I was at it, the problem remains.

All ram is 400mhz. I have 2 identical sticks of MDT and 2 identical Corsair. I'm runing them in dual channel according to the Asus manual. One pair in the blue slots (1&3), the other in the black slots (2&4).
However, CAS latency is different between the MDTs and Corsairs. The Asus manual does say they should be identical but I understood that as being identical in pairs, and that they are. Same CAS in the MDTs and same in the Corsair, just different between the MDT and Corsair.
I should mention that dual channel has always worked previously, don't forget that I ONLY have the problem when I install the UAD-1?!

Neil, I hear ya about the PCChips ;) However, the UAD-1 is definitely touchy, doesn't like my 4Gb on my Asus and doesn't like the PCChips board.

I did talk the Brett at UAs PC tech support, but he had no idea what was going on? I'm getting more help from here. Although he was kind and concerned, just never heard of the prob. But now that I know why it's happening, I'll give him another call.

So, now that the problem seems to be pinpointed...what's the solution?? I wanna and need to run 4Gb. Does anybody think that having 4 identical sticks would solve the problem? Anybody else (secretworld?) running 4gb of RAM on a P4P800, if so, what's your ram setup?

Thanks for the continued support! :)
Cheers,
Chumbo
 

neil wilkes

Venerated Member
Why is the 4Gb so crucial?
Even with SP2 you can only address up to 3Gb with any one application, and only then with a registry hack.

I have to admit that even running large VSTi patches with EWQLSO Gold, and Symphonic Choirs, 2Gb is plenty for me.....but what do I know?

Of course, if you are multitasking with stuff like ReWire, and running Reason/Host combinations, or GigaStudio/Host combinations, it's a different story I suppose.
But 4Gb does seem like a lot of RAM.....
 

chumbo

Member
It's really just for the large VSTis, I manage to easily exceed the 2Gb of RAM with just about any project I run.
You have about 500Mb for Windows, add a 1Gb piano and you're almost already to your limit!! See, it's pretty easy ;)
I searched a bit the forum and to my surprise, I didn't find that many with 4Gb of ram but the few that did, ran into other problems which required a 3Gb switch? Not sure what that's about but that's only necessary if you can at least boot into Windows. I can't even reach the BIOS so...different problem.
I'd really like to hear more from working 4Gb setups! Please post :)
Cheers,
Chumbo
 

Paul Woodlock

Established Member
chumbo said:
It's really just for the large VSTis, I manage to easily exceed the 2Gb of RAM with just about any project I run.
You have about 500Mb for Windows, add a 1Gb piano and you're almost already to your limit!! See, it's pretty easy ;)
I searched a bit the forum and to my surprise, I didn't find that many with 4Gb of ram but the few that did, ran into other problems which required a 3Gb switch? Not sure what that's about but that's only necessary if you can at least boot into Windows. I can't even reach the BIOS so...different problem.
I'd really like to hear more from working 4Gb setups! Please post :)
Cheers,
Chumbo
AFAIK large sample libraries loaded into VSTi's within your host are still under the 2Gb ( 3Gb with switch ) limit. rendering 4Gb a little pointless until 64bit computing.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong./

I do know that with SX/Nuendo you're limited to around 1.4 to 1.7Gb of RAM usage for each project. The proggies won't even let you save a project once this limit is exceeded ( > V3.1 )


Paul
 

Akis

Sadly, left this world before his time.
Moderator
Paul Woodlock said:
I do know that with SX/Nuendo you're limited to around 1.4 to 1.7Gb of RAM usage for each project. The proggies won't even let you save a project once this limit is exceeded ( > V3.1 )
Yeah, I had this lovely experience last week - don't you just love Steinbug? :evil:
 

secretworld

Active Member
I´m happy you found the problem. Unfortunatly i´m no memory expert, it was just a intuition, based on everything I experinced and read. The reason I thought about it is that I know the the uad ads to the ram pool adresses, even more then the 4 mb that´s onboard the card. The problem could be resolved maybe with bios settings or a new bios. I´m not sure it is the 4 sticks that is the problem. If you havn´t set the 3gb switch (see my sign) you have never used more then 1.7 gb of your ram with cubase (absolutly certain!!!!) Setting the 3 gig switch wich you need to when using even 3 gig of ram, is not easy, I had to patch cubase sx2 to get it to be large adress aware, Some people say that also nuendo 3 and sx3 need the be patched also, stenberg claims it is already large adress aware. I don´t own sx3....so I wouldn´t know for sure , but I trust the posters on nuendo net.
Good luck
I´ll check back later
and nice holidayz everybody
 

chumbo

Member
Thanks for your reply. I searched UAs website and the forum but couldn't find any useful info regarding this 3Gb switch? Would you (or someone else) mind explaining it further? What exactely am I supposed to do?
So is the consensus then that more than 3Gb of RAM on a WinXP PC is totally useless? I certainly wasn't aware of this so I'd just like to be sure that it's fairly unanimously shared opinion and not just some myth before I sell one of my pairs of 1Gb ram sticks and buy a matched pair of 512Mb instead to make it 3Gb and dual channel.

Cheers,
Chumbo
 

secretworld

Active Member
chumbo said:
Thanks for your reply. I searched UAs website and the forum but couldn't find any useful info regarding this 3Gb switch? Would you (or someone else) mind explaining it further? What exactely am I supposed to do?
So is the consensus then that more than 3Gb of RAM on a WinXP PC is totally useless? I certainly wasn't aware of this so I'd just like to be sure that it's fairly unanimously shared opinion and not just some myth before I sell one of my pairs of 1Gb ram sticks and buy a matched pair of 512Mb instead to make it 3Gb and dual channel.

Cheers,
Chumbo
The 3 gig switch has nothing to do with our Uad´s but with sx/nuendo and how much memory they can use of the max 4 gig available in a 32bit OS. Normally it is 2 gigs for the programs and 2 gigs for the OS/drivers. the 3 gig switch changes that to 3 for programs.
I can´t garantie that 3 gig with 4 sticks will work cause we´re not sure if it´s the 4 sticks or the 4 gigs that is causing the problems. Maybe someone else has 3 gig that way.

Here is the link to the nuendo forum about the switch and how much gigs of ram are usefull
http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=8186
BTW if you didn´t have any problems loading projects without the 3 gig switch, you won´t notice a difference with only 2 gigs installed since you where using only 2 gigs. Without the switch sx/nuendo can´t load more then 1.4/1.7 gigs of samples to ram (wich is quiet a lot with direct from disk streaming, can be 100´s of gigs that way...)
Good luck again!!
Just enjoy your UAD1 for a while, it´s sooooooo nice
 

chumbo

Member
I checked your link to the Nuendo forum, very interesting stuff but...it doesn't tell me what the actual 3gb switch is (what am I supposed to do on my PC?). Also, they talk about a patch for the SX and Nuendo which is apparently supposed to go hand in hand with the 3gb switch (if I understood correctly?). That patch isn't explained either. Is it something you download and execute? a registry entry?
Thanks for clarifying all this! :)

BTW, all this has of course nothing to do with my problem of the PC not booting with the UAD-1 and 4Gb of RAM since I can't even reach the BIOS, much less Windows so it's definitely a hardware problemn nothing to do with a switch or patch. I'm just curious if ANY P4P800 user has been able to install 4Gb of ram AND a UAD-1 and get them to work?
Cheers,
Chumbo
 

secretworld

Active Member
no you are right it´s about the fact that installing 3or 4 gigs without the switch is useless, you can´t use the ram anyway.

The switch is a boot ini edit, it should not be undertaken lightly!!!
Search for instructions on cubase or nuendo forum

Again if you wern´t having problems without the 3 gig switch you could just as easily stay with 2 gigs of ram, realy!
 
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