Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 Accel
 

Hello,

I have just bought an EB4 expansion chassis for my HD3 rig. The system was working perfect inside my computer also in combination with my UAD-2 Quad card.

My system:
Windows 7 Professional 64bit
AMD Phenom II X4 3.4GHz, 16GB DDR3 1333MHz, Sapphire Radeon HD 5850, Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5, (onboard audio, parallel and serial port disabled in bios)
I have connected the graphics card to the first PCIe slot. No additional cards are installed (also the UAD-2 Quad is not installed at the moment). There is an x4, x8 and x16 slot left but it does not make any difference where the Magma host card is connected. The computer works as usual as long as the chassis is not powered on but still connected. I mean everything else works but not Pro Tools then for sure ;-)

Empty chassis:
No bios beep – so nothing at all.
I could solve this by disabling the additional Gigabyte/JMicron SATA controllers in bios. Would not be a problem because all my drives are connected to the AMD SATA ports

2 Pro Tools Cards installed:
It works. But when installing the UAD-2 Quad to the Mainboard there is again no bios beep.

3 Pro Tools Cards installed:
Bios beep, but freezing when trying to boot windows as it says “loading operations system”.
It works when disabling LAN1, LAN2 and USB3 in bios. But also not with the UAD card.

So this is not acceptable. I need at least one LAN card to connect to the C24.
What is the problem here?
Is the system running out of resources/interrupts or something like this?

I also tried it within a new bought socket 2011 Intel machine.
The additional Marvell SATA controllers also had to be disabled to get a bios beep. Then it boots up windows but right after boot it had a blue screen.

Any ideas?

Merry Christmas!
Gandlz

Re: Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 A
 

What version of Pro Tools?

What drivers?

Any IRQ conflicts?

Re: Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 A
 

sorry for missing info:
Pro Tools HD v10.3.7
drivers from Pro Tools installation

Magma does not require any drivers.
Windows shows no IRQ conflicts when it starts correct.
But the problem is, that it will not start most of the time.

Re: Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 A
 

I meant what drivers for Pro Tools or your interface, but I guess those are installed with the Pro Tools installation.

If you are getting a Blue Screen, it should also be creating a dump file that points to the problem. What message is displaying when you get the BSOD?

Have you tried to debug the dump/mini dump file?

Re: Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 A
 

Yes, the drivers were installed during Pro Tools installation.
The 192 I/O has the latest firmware installed.

I don’t have the Intel computer still here, which gave me the blue screen. I just took the chance and used it for a short test.
My AMD computer as mentioned does not even boot windows.

Sorry, but I cannot provide further info about the blue screen.

Gandlz

Re: Magma EB4 - ExpressBox 4 (2U) - Windows boot freeze, not starting with PCIe HD3 A
 

OK – I could find the problem now:

It seems that the mainboard cannot handle a full equipped expansion chassis.
I tried two newer boards and they worked. These were ASUS M5A99FX Pro 2.0 and Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5.
There were no onboard devices which had to be disabled and also no blue screen like on the even more powerful Intel machine.

Thanks for your help.