bluesfendermanblues

Dear Forumites, I build the CAPS server version 2/3 5 years ago. In order to save a little, I used an old server tower, back in 2012 when I build the server. Four month ago I decided to upgrade the server with a second hand Silverstone cabinet - I was a litlle back and forth in regards to whether to purchase a dedicated cabinet or to simply use a ol' 1U rack on my bench. Searched the local craigs list and found the Silvrstone. It looked quite fine and fits nicely into my rack. As part of the upgrade process, I decided to upgrade the PSU's from SPSS to DIY regulated supplies (12vdc with 60.000 uf for the DN2800MT MOBO and 9VDC with 40000uf for the SOtM USB Exp). However, in order to fit the SOtM card into the Silverstone cab, a riser cable was needed - couldn't find a 90 degree riser for this particular cabinet. Therefore, I used the Apollo23-PCI-E PCI-Express 1X Slot Riser cable (bought on Amazon) to connect a SOtM USB 3.0 EXP card to Intel DN2800MT MOBO. Bad decision!! Symptom: Card stopped working periodically sometimes at boot up and after a couple of re-boots it would stop after a while...... Unfortunately operating systems won't know that you have a flawed data cable connection. The computer showed driver errors in the 'device manager' and various errors in 'event log'. I've spent 50-100 hours (probably more) trying: All the (TI) driver versions I could find, including the ones that came with the install CD, downloads from SOtM website (same as CD). Hereafter, TI downloads and Windows downloads (which are included in win 10). Nothing helped. Then searching the net for Event id error tweaks. Formatting disc partitions; Reinstalling win7, then upgraded to Win8, then finally Win 10 Pro Upgrading BIOS and disabling the LAN NIC and using a USB WiFi stick instead I finally decided to reinstall the SOtM card without the riser cable directly into the MOBO. In order to do this, I had to do a little metal work, drilling a number of holes in the cabinet, bending the USB mounting bracket (glad I didn't use the old 1U rack, since the opportunity for direct mounting would not have been possible and I probably would not have thought of trying the direct mount solution). Success!!! has worked flawlessly ever since. Conclusion: Cable errors in ordinary power and audio cables are usually easy to detect. Data cables inside a computer not so much, and this particular error is difficult for your operating system to detect. Therefore, I strongly advise you not to buy the Apollo23-PCI-E PCI-Express 1X Slot Riser cable for the above mentioned application. I'm obviously quite disappointed with the cable and the soldering quality.Its obviously not designed to be bent. Must be bad soldering joints or the connectors not having proper contact. I would advise you to find alternatives or simple put the card directly into the MOBO. CAPS configuration: MOBO: DN2800MT, Hitatchi 1TB, SOTM SATA filter, SOtM 3.0 USB ext., DIY regulated PSU - 12v for MOBO, 9v for SOtM. => Supra USB cable=> Musical Fidelity V-DAC ii (w. upgraded output caps).

Don't know if you've found a solution, yet. I went through exactly the same trouble, which eventually was solved by installing the latest bios and chipset drivers AND pressing F9 in the bios setup. after that my system worked with the latest SOtM (texas) driver (the 25 version). http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/sotm-usb-3-0-pci-exp-difficulties-solved-press-f9-bios-13730/ Hope this helps.

Dear all, I would like to share my experience with getting the new SOtm PCI exp up and running. This is my first post at this forum.....been a regular reader for the past 6 month...and like the rest of you I'm a music enthusiast. For the past +10 year I have relied mainly on a Parasound 1000 CD player as signal source. However, a trip to a local HiFi store this summer, auditioning a NAIM unity, convinced me that I need a server (not a NAIM - too expensive for me), which is on par with a Parasound CD, but can be controlled with the convenience of an iPhone/iPAD. After reading a lot of magazines and forums, I stumbled on this forum and Chris' CAPS servers and have decided to try one along the lines of Chris', but with these parts: Mobo: Intel DN2800MT NM10 Express / Mini ITX RAM: 2 x 2048 MB SO-DDR3 1066 MHz CL7 Kingston HDD: Western Digital, Caviar Black, 1 TBWD1002FAEX (24db) SOtM POwer Noise Filter II for SATA SOtM tx-USB exp 3.0 Host PSU MOBO & HDD: Labtop type I had lying around (12VDC, 24w only - I probably to upgrade to the 60w model) PSU USB Card - Labtop type PSU I had lying around (9VDC, 18wl) DAC: Musical Fidelity V-DAC ii (PSU is the enclosed switchmode) which is used both for the CD player, through SPDIF, and for the server above through USB. Now the system is up and running - I'm happy as a lark. However, getting the server up and running was really frustrating. I started with a Win8 beta but I must admit, the user interface is too complicated AND I couldnt get a suitable driver for the D-Ling Wifi, which will be used for controlling the server. Therefore a win7 (32-bit) upgrade was downloaded and installed. However, I got into the same USD Card problems as many other have descriped on this forum. After installing the latest Texas instruments driver (v1.12.25), I was able to actually 'see' the card in device manager, but I got a 'Code 12' - which indicate a hardware conflict. I must have tweaked and rebooted that machine more than 50 times over the past 3 days. The solution was After installing the latest bios (MT0159P) and chipset drivers ((which I did initially), you have to go into the bios setup (F2) and pres F9 and Y to restore factory settings. Once I did that the system worked. I could 'see' the card in device manager and I could see the V-Dac in JRiver 17 under options device. Next step is upgrading the PSU's for V-DAC ii and USB Card with DIY liniar supplies and buying a quality USB Cable instead of the present computer usb cable. FYI - JRemote is used for controlling JRiver via both iPhone and iPad - teamviewer 7 for service duty tasks - Files are ripped on another computer and transferred to the musicserver via MS SyncToy - works like a charm - IP address is set to static ip - Wifi connection is via DLink WGA140 connected via a 2 ft cable. I hope above mentioned info is usefull to some of you, having trouble with the SOtM 3.0 card. Best regards