Digigram VX222

[Dave Plowman (News]

This is a quite old balanced in/out pro sound card. Has digital in out too. Was previously working fine under Win7. But is a PCI card.

New MB is PCI-Ex only.

Got an adpator for not a lot which gives you twin PCI slots from a PCI-EX x1. Really designed to be used external to the PC via a USB 3 lead. The USB lead goes between the PCI EX card and the board with the twin PCI slots.

Worked OK initially on test. It has power as there is a LED on the twin PCI PCB.

Bios recognises a card present in the PCI-Ex x 1 slot. Doesn't identify it as such - but then it doesn't identify the working video card either.

According to Google, this card and software will work with Win 10. And the software runs OK. Win 10 suggests using it as Vista compatible.

The problem is intermittent. More often than not, the software reports the card not seen - and no driver loaded in device manager.

But sometimes it works just fine.

I can buy a new PCI-Ex card which will do the same thing - but costs about £1000 quid. ;-)

It all interfaces with the house sound system and worked extremely well.

[jon]

What class of Win 10 are you using.........Home, Pro, Server. I have found Win10 Home is very poor at recognising some connecting devices.

[Theo]

Those things are taking liberties with the PCI spec. They perhaps/maybe/probably work, until they don't. The use of USB 3 cabling is a massive hack (although electrically it's actually reasonably matched).

I'd trust something like this a bit more:

Of course it's possibly not a hardware problem and just Windows being weird

- it does that.

Theo

[Dave Plowman (News]

Win10 Pro.

[Andy Burns]

Personally, I wouldn't expect a jot of difference between Win10 home and Win10 pro (or probably Windows Server 2019) as far as PnP device detection is concerned ...

[Dave Plowman (News]

Nothing Windows can or can't do ever surprises me. ;-) Other snag is it's a new MB - which seems to be designed with gamers in mind.

But having another look at it, I seemed to have fixed it. I had the PCIe to USB cable card situated so the cable crossed the video card. Had forgotten that a PCie x1 can be plugged into a PCIe-16, and there's a spare of those that would allow a better cable run for the 'USB' cable - well clear of anything. And so far, so good. It has worked over several re-boots, so hoping it's fixed once and for all.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Is it sensitive on which usb its using, also some usbs are still older spec ones while others are not. I fixed this by getting powered hub usb 3 device and plugging that into the usb3. However if you say it works in Windows 7, go back to that. There are a lot of odd things that occur in windows10. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Unless the voltage its running on is a bit on the low side or noisy of course. Brian

[Andy Burns]

It's not really USB, it's just USB3 sockets and cable with a single laee PCIe running over them

Did the problems only start after you cut off and soldered the USB lead?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Sort of yes and no. I couldn't put the card in its place with the USB connector in place - the plug on the cable fouled the case. But it worked on test OK outside the case after the cut and solder job. Fitting it inside the case and the problems started. Although it worked first time afterwards.

It's been fine for most of the day after relocating the card with the USB connector to a different PCIe slot. Only a guess, but I'm wondering if the USB cable going over the video card was zapping it? It's all now well away from it.

[Andy Burns]

Maybe, although system builders who build high-end M/B and GPU in tiny cases sometimes use ridiculously long looking ribbon cables from the x16 PCIe slot to wherever they shoe-horn the graphics card.

Plus cryptominers would fit numerous GPUs into a system using similar PCIe over USB leads ...

[Theo]

Oh dear. I didn't receive the post where you said you'd cut and soldered it.

Out of the box this is a hack that's running at 2.5 or 5Gbps (probably 2.5). Having bodged it further, unless you know what you're doing with making controlled impedance cabling into the GHz range, it's almost certainly losing packets due to reflections and interference.

You might be able to find a cable route that reduces the interference, but if the impedance isn't right it won't be robust. PCIe is remarkable in how much signal abuse it will cover up, but eventually it runs out of road.

Theo

[Dave Plowman (News]

No option if I wanted the card inside the case.

Was very careful with the twisted pairs.

Seems to be working just fine now. Fingers crossed.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Latest silly. Zoom refuses to accept the Digigram as the audio out - even although it is there on its drop down menu. And set in Windows. Bit of a problem, given that feeds the speakers.

[Fredxx]

<snip>

What happens within device manager when you disable the card, and then re-enable?

So cheaper to find a MB with a PCI slot.