So... my lovely wife, after getting sick of hearing me complain about the crappy XP computer I use in the lab got me a very nice Windows 7 machine. The problem is that the M-Audio 192 card I use is full height and HP shipped her a low profile machine (without really mentioning that fact- this model is apparently available in two versions). The edge connecters are fine, but the card obviously doesn't fit. Any suggestions, or are we screwed?
Looking at the card, your screwed 🙁
Best bet is get in contact with HP and see can you exchange it, i'm not a fan of the lower profile machines your better off with the bigger ones.
Best bet is get in contact with HP and see can you exchange it, i'm not a fan of the lower profile machines your better off with the bigger ones.
Depending on the horizontal room available inside the case, there are adapters designed for that situation. Look for PCI right-angle adapter or extender.
I found those, but they don't allow connection of the analog interface connector on the back of the card. If we can't exchange, I'm thinking of just moving the motherboard into a different case.
PCI PCIe Riser Card
(Note the flexible ones)
Another option is leaving the case open, or cut a hole in the panel....
Pick your poison.
Personally, I'd use this as an excuse to upgrade/get another sound card. I got this: UR28M:|http://www.steinberg.net/
The UR44 looks good.
(Note the flexible ones)
Another option is leaving the case open, or cut a hole in the panel....
Pick your poison.
Personally, I'd use this as an excuse to upgrade/get another sound card. I got this: UR28M:|http://www.steinberg.net/
The UR44 looks good.
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Before doing anything drastic, see if you can get the 24/192 into a slot and operational, even with the cover off the PC. I have 5 or 6 different M-Audio cards including a 24/96 and a 24/192. All have been in and out of several computers over the last several years with good results.
I recently built a new Mega PC running an overclocked Haswell chip in an MSI motherboard. There are two budget video cards to run two monitors and a TV set. All of the M-Audio cards pick up bus noise in this machine. You can hear faint background noises whenever the mouse is moved. The 24/96 is the worst and the Delta 1010LT is the best, so that's what's in the machine now. I tried all the PCI eX slots and the one furthest away from the video cards is the quietest.
I think that a USB box is the best solution since it gets the converters and opamps out of the noisy PC. I have a MOTU Micro Book II that I got for playing my guitar through the laptop and it is totally silent with this PC.
I recently built a new Mega PC running an overclocked Haswell chip in an MSI motherboard. There are two budget video cards to run two monitors and a TV set. All of the M-Audio cards pick up bus noise in this machine. You can hear faint background noises whenever the mouse is moved. The 24/96 is the worst and the Delta 1010LT is the best, so that's what's in the machine now. I tried all the PCI eX slots and the one furthest away from the video cards is the quietest.
I think that a USB box is the best solution since it gets the converters and opamps out of the noisy PC. I have a MOTU Micro Book II that I got for playing my guitar through the laptop and it is totally silent with this PC.
So another vote for the new soundcard solution! Woho!
FYI, the yamaha mic pre gets a lot of praise... (Steinberg = Yamaha)
It physically won't fit- the rear panel of the computer sees to that. I've had this card in three different computers so far, worked fine in all of them. Its performance is great, so I'm disinclined to replace it (and couldn't afford to anyway until my ex-wife has the courtesy to die).
Appreciate the suggestions from everyone. If we can't exchange the computer, I'll try an extender and hope that doesn't cause noise issues. If it does, then the XP machine comes back and I have another year of complaining until next Christmas. 😀
Does the XP machine have enough processor power to run W7. 64 bit XP died during birth, so very few copies exist....and it sucks, so I assume you have 32 bit XP, which only sees 3.7 GB of memory.
If the processor is 64 bit capable, you can upgrade to 64 bit W7 and then add more memory. I have been able to make a few rather sluggish laptops come to life with W7, 8 gigs of RAM, and an SSD.
Sherri got me a Core I7 laptop for Christmas right after I fixed up the old Toshiba, so I sent the Toshi to my daughter......W8 is no fun either. It took me 3 days to figure out where they hid the shutdown button! The touch screen has a mind of its own too. I think it can see me when I give it the finger......
If the processor is 64 bit capable, you can upgrade to 64 bit W7 and then add more memory. I have been able to make a few rather sluggish laptops come to life with W7, 8 gigs of RAM, and an SSD.
Sherri got me a Core I7 laptop for Christmas right after I fixed up the old Toshiba, so I sent the Toshi to my daughter......W8 is no fun either. It took me 3 days to figure out where they hid the shutdown button! The touch screen has a mind of its own too. I think it can see me when I give it the finger......
@SY: Can't you swap cases between the XP machine and the new one? i.e. Put the guts of the new machine in the old case and vice versa.
Hello SY.
Tried sending you a PM but that was a waste of time.
If I may provide some assumptions, and good solutions to your problems that are free and dremel-less.
1. You bought your XP machine finished, pre installed, and plug'n'pray. It is most likely full of bloatware, if you go to control panel and installed programs, provide me with some screen captures or make a list of all the programs there, I can give you back a list of programs you can uninstall safely, to ease the load of your computer. Bloatware swamps resources without actually doing anything useful.
2. Have you ever disconnected all the fans in the computer and given the heatsinks and fan blades a proper cleaning (including PSU)? If you experience a lot of crashing, cooling may be an issue, or it may also be that the RAM modules cannot cope with the timings or voltage they are set to, but this is a more advanced solution if all else fails.
3. If your computer is excruciatingly slow, and you've never done a defragmentation of the harddrive, you may consider it a completely stuffed archive with noone hired to maintain and catalog everything, the read head needs to run all over the place, skimming through piles of trash trying to find the information you seek.
Hope you do not find my suggestions offensive, they are given with the very best intentions, If you can provide some information on the problems I am more than willing to try and help you out as best I can.
Tried sending you a PM but that was a waste of time.
If I may provide some assumptions, and good solutions to your problems that are free and dremel-less.
1. You bought your XP machine finished, pre installed, and plug'n'pray. It is most likely full of bloatware, if you go to control panel and installed programs, provide me with some screen captures or make a list of all the programs there, I can give you back a list of programs you can uninstall safely, to ease the load of your computer. Bloatware swamps resources without actually doing anything useful.
2. Have you ever disconnected all the fans in the computer and given the heatsinks and fan blades a proper cleaning (including PSU)? If you experience a lot of crashing, cooling may be an issue, or it may also be that the RAM modules cannot cope with the timings or voltage they are set to, but this is a more advanced solution if all else fails.
3. If your computer is excruciatingly slow, and you've never done a defragmentation of the harddrive, you may consider it a completely stuffed archive with noone hired to maintain and catalog everything, the read head needs to run all over the place, skimming through piles of trash trying to find the information you seek.
Hope you do not find my suggestions offensive, they are given with the very best intentions, If you can provide some information on the problems I am more than willing to try and help you out as best I can.
Thanks, all:
1. I will see if the motherboard can be swapped into another case- I have three or four of them.
2. The problems I've had with the XP machine only seem to happen with some audio testing software and ASIO drivers- everything else is fine, if slow and clumsy. The same drivers and software work flawlessly on my 7 machines (which lack PCI).
3. It's a "clean" machine- no extra software on it (not even an internet connection) other than Soundeasy, AudioTester, RMAA, and the basic MS utilities (Paint, Wordpad, Calculator- no Office).
4. Too old to effectively convert to 7. I think I bought it in 2000 or 2001.
I *hope* that if we can't get it exchanged, that the case transplant will do the trick.
1. I will see if the motherboard can be swapped into another case- I have three or four of them.
2. The problems I've had with the XP machine only seem to happen with some audio testing software and ASIO drivers- everything else is fine, if slow and clumsy. The same drivers and software work flawlessly on my 7 machines (which lack PCI).
3. It's a "clean" machine- no extra software on it (not even an internet connection) other than Soundeasy, AudioTester, RMAA, and the basic MS utilities (Paint, Wordpad, Calculator- no Office).
4. Too old to effectively convert to 7. I think I bought it in 2000 or 2001.
I *hope* that if we can't get it exchanged, that the case transplant will do the trick.
If the machine is from 2000/2001 XP will be a bit resource hogging in itself, you can switch off some wasteful visual settings, but that's about it.
Right click "MY Computer" go: properties/advanced/performance/settings
On the Visual effects tab, choose Adjust for best performance, you can activate "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" afterwards if you wish to retain the XP look.
But really, a PC from 2001 is most likely not suited for running XP at all, at the most I'd go with Windows 2000, or a linux distro. That time it was the peak of the transition from the cumbersome IRQ/DMA troubled systems over to the new system hierarchy, the auto management of the operating systems is what patched things together with xp/2k and the dreaded Windows Millennium, but it was a loosing battle because of the inefficiency of the hardware.
Sounds like you installed XP yourself, if you did not you will have a lot of crap pre installed from the manufacturer. Certainly hope you have at least sp2 installed, or preferably slipstreamed it into a new installation ISO, as that would help with at least some of the issues. But you're bound to have some problems still, so the "moving stuff about to a suitable case" plan is the only viable one.
Right click "MY Computer" go: properties/advanced/performance/settings
On the Visual effects tab, choose Adjust for best performance, you can activate "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" afterwards if you wish to retain the XP look.
But really, a PC from 2001 is most likely not suited for running XP at all, at the most I'd go with Windows 2000, or a linux distro. That time it was the peak of the transition from the cumbersome IRQ/DMA troubled systems over to the new system hierarchy, the auto management of the operating systems is what patched things together with xp/2k and the dreaded Windows Millennium, but it was a loosing battle because of the inefficiency of the hardware.
Sounds like you installed XP yourself, if you did not you will have a lot of crap pre installed from the manufacturer. Certainly hope you have at least sp2 installed, or preferably slipstreamed it into a new installation ISO, as that would help with at least some of the issues. But you're bound to have some problems still, so the "moving stuff about to a suitable case" plan is the only viable one.
If you ask around you may be able to scrounge a newer system for free. I chatted with a local computer consultant at a trade show, said I was looking for a motherboard from an older system (to temporarily replace one that had bad caps), and he hooked me up with a complete dual-core Compaq that just needed a power supply. I added SATA power plugs to an old P4-rated Enermax psu (rescued from a scrapped PIII server), and it works fine.
Some cities have FreeGeek organizations that refurbish computers and sell used parts.
Some cities have FreeGeek organizations that refurbish computers and sell used parts.
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Nope, the machine came with XP. No matter, it's resting comfortably in the corner of the garage. My wife went at the new 7 machine with some tin snips, and now the card is in and working spectacularly well.
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