[Phil O'Keefe]

Okay, again, thx Allen for all the suggestions. I've got a A7V266E, a AMD Athlon XP 1800, 256 MB of DDR RAM (Kingston), a Matrox G550 with dual 17" monitors @ 1024 X 768 / 16 bit color, onboard sound and second COM port disabled in BIOS, and the Digi 001 in slot #3 and my Tascam US-428 hooked up to one of the rear panel USB ports. Mouse and keyboard are PS/2.

I've currently got my C and D drives on the same cable (C master, D Slave) using the Onboard Promise controller's Primary IDE (NOT RAID). I've got my CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives on the Secondary IDE of the Promise controller (Acer 8x4x32 CD-RW master, DVD-ROM slave). Question is, when I'm running off this controller, there's no "DMA" checkbox in either the control panel or device manager that I can find... Should I use this controller or the Std one? I thoght the Promise controller was the one to use, but the lack of DMA checkboxes has me puzzled. Also, should I use it with my CD drives as well, or should I put those on the std controller and get them off the Promise controller and use 4 seperate cables (each drive then working as a "master" on seperate interfaces?

I did the Davec test with this, and got 24+5 tracks. CPU was sitting around 2/3rds on the bar graph, and as soon as I hit that 6th aux track, it goes "red". Seems a bit strange. Obviously, I'd like MORE if that's possible! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] (EDIT / UPDATE: I tried it again, and set the CPU use to 85% and was able to get a extra three aux tracks for a total of 24+8). This is at 44.1 KHz, 24 bit (I've always done the davec tests at 24 bit).

Here's my IRQ's:

00 System timer
01 Std 101/102 keybd.
02 Programmable interupt controller
04 Communications port (COM1)
06 Std Floppy Disk Controller
07 Printer Port (LPT1)
08 System CMOS/real time clock
09 Digidesign 001
09 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
09 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
10 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal host Controller
10 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal host Controller
10 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal host Controller (Yes, it's really showing up 3 x's)
10 WIN ME Promise Ultra 100(tm) IDE Controller (PDC20265)
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 PS/2 compatable mouse port
13 Numeric data processor
14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
14 Primary IDE Controller (dual fifo)
15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE Controller (dual fifo)


A couple other things:

CPU temp seems to be running at about 51 C / 124 F... is that acceptable? The CPU heatsink / fan was installed by my dealer (it's a Cooler Master fan), and I also have a case fan in there just behind the CPU, exausting out.

This MOBO doesn't seem to let me want to change my CPU V Core voltage to anything lower than 1.800 V. Is that acceptable? I think the AMD spec is supposed to be 1.75 V.

Any suggestions and / or comments are welcomed!

Thanks again for everyone's help.