Fasttrak vs SCSI

[Todd1]

I have followed the forum on Fasttrak - I have a "true" (no hack) Fasttrak 66 and can not get rid of the crackling noise. I have an ISA-based sound card, cleared the PCI bus . . .

If I accept that the Via chipset is to blame I have two choices:
A new MB or go SCSI. A new MB will be cheaper but SCSI would be fun to play with. Will my Via chipset limit me if I go with a SCSI RAID set-up?

Output from my RR is great if I stay with Matrox MJPEG. Unfortunately I need to run my video out of Power Point and for some reason using the Matrox MJPEG causes Power Point to pause for 5 to 10 seconds while it "thinks about" the video slide. This is a problem when I'm trying to give a smooth presentation. Using software codecs does not cause any pause in Power Point. Unfortunately the software codecs I've used to date (I'm a novice) look terrible. Which is why I'm looking at uncompressed video.

Config:

P3 733
Soltek MB
Via Apollo Pro 133 chipset
Win98SE

[Dr Mordrid]

VIA chipped boards can exhibit lower PCI performance, that's for sure.

As for SCSI vs. IDE RAID's; the biggest difference is price. The Fasttrak's look to the system like an SCSI controller so. For me the "fun of playing with SCSI" looses its appeal when the bills come in.

Have you performed the filesystem and OS tuneups recommended in the Getting Started and Idiots Guides?

Dr. Mordrid

[xortam]

One of the many benefits of SCSI is that you can place the devices in an external box, thus freeing up space in your PC and reducing generated heat.

[Dr Mordrid]

I haven't found that necessary with the Maxtor drives and a decent case. I use the Apex Supercase full tower. It has 6 5" bays, 6 3.5" bays, space for 3 large fans and a 300w power supply.

Runs cool as a cucumber with four 40g ATA66 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 drives on the Fasttrak.

$65 USD at a local computer show. You can read about it and see pix in the reviews page at [url]http://www.desktopvideoworld.com[/url}

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 28 July 2000).]

[dchip]

Doc, I've got a big tower like that too. I did pay twice as much for it from a company called Antec. Good solid case, though. Doesn't have the two cooling fan openings at the very top (your review is right, heat rises) but does have fan on power supply (300w) and one more fanhole at the very top. I like the way mine opens a bit more than the SuperCase. Remove eight screws on back and then the top and both sides slide off as one U-shaped piece. All the innards are then reachable. Easy to work with. Its not on wheels but does stand a full 25" off the floor. Clearly you got a whole lot of case for a great price. I only scanned through your review but does your case have a reset button also?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. It's a standard ATX case with power & reset buttons, drive & power lights. The Supercase sides come off with 4 screws, but I only attach 2 of them. 4 was overkill.

What's also nice about the Supercase is that it has a preformed channel for the power cables to go from the top to the bottom of the case. This opens up some space in the middle for air circulation. If you're careful with the ribbon cables things get drafty in there

Dr. Mordrid

[Todd1]

Doc, I optimized my system for video - the Adobe site had a nice instruction set for setting up an individual profile and changing settings. A couple of the changes bother me because they must be independent of individual profiles and I hate to impact the performance of Photoshop as I spend 90% of my computer time working with this program. Oh well. Frankly, I'm jealous of your Fasttrak performance numbers. The Matrox drive tool indicates I can get 30+ Meg/min but as I'm not doing silent films it does matter. After playing with the Promise settings I can capture at 3Meg/min without noise but that is not much help.

I guess I'll try another motherboard before I go SCSI. I've just got to pick one that will work with my existing processor and memory.

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually minimizing PCI loading will speed up Photoshop ops as well as editing. Those Adobe tweaks are not detrimental to it at all...

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Your powerpoint delays sound like the slow Matrox hardware MJPEG codec initilazition.

If your presentation machine is fairly new and doesn't have a Marvel, try using the PIC Video software MJPEG codec. It seems to play Marvel DMB1 captures very well for me on systems without the Marvel.

If you have to use powerpoint on the machine with your Marvel, try the trick of first opening a small MJPEG AVI in media player then pause and minimize it. Then launch PP.

Media player should "have" the hardware codec which is slow to init, forcing PP to use the software MJPEG decoder which seems to have more normal startup delays.

hope this helps.

--wally.


PS If the problem is PCI bus usage interfering with the audio on the Via chipset, then SCSI might not help either since it still has to move the data across the PCI bus to the drives. As Doc said, at ~3X the $/MB the fun of SCSI goes away quickly.

Have you tried a better power supply? Its possible that power supply noise is getting thru to your sound card. This would be independent of PCI/ISA cards as last time I looked most sound cards had about the same power line noise rejection specs -- if your power supply is noisy enough, it will get thru to interfere with the analog input.

A few years ago power supplies would be one of the last things I'd suspect, but there is a lot of marginal junk out there now.