[LAU] HDSP 9652+Win 7 == update flash - bye bye Linux audio & Alsa?

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Paul,
>>>   I'd be happy to try to involve RME if there's some real chance that
>>> a Linux developer will really work on the issues. I don't want to try
>>> to pump them up and then not have anyone here to really look at it.
>>> Are you the person that would do this work? You're so busy with Ardour
>>> that for the good of the community you wouldn't be my first choice as
>>
>> I wasn't volunteering. But I do know that there are people who will
>> make the (apparently) minor tweaks to the driver to make it operate
>> with the new firmware (although its also very far from clear if any
>> changes at all are necessary).
>>
>>> I think this is a smaller issue than Ardour. I know you have used RME
>>> for years although I wasn't aware that you used an HDSP series card,
>>> if you do.
>>
>> I do.
>>
>>> when I got around to trying to load audio drivers I went to the RME
>>> web site and they stated very clearly that the Win 7 drivers require
>>> the newest firmware. I don't blame them. It's probably good stuff, but
>>> it looks like it will finally break compatibility with the 'old
>>> firmware to make Alsa drivers work' construct.
>>
>> that's not clear to me from the material that you quoted. i dealt with
>> several RME firmware upgrades in the past, and they were trivial to
>> support. you need to understand that the "firmware" is not actually
>> firmware at all. its just some data to be loaded into the matrix
>> mixer.
>>
>> --p
>>
> I have just posted a couple of questions in the RME forums to try and
> get some info.
>
> To the best of my knowledge I was/am running firmware (or what ever we
> want to call this stuff) version 104 prior to moving the card to the
> new machine. It was my understanding that the Linux stuff didn't work
> correctly or at all with anything above 104 or 105, and the Win XP
> stuff didn't work correctly, but did work, with 104 so I think I
> was/am running 104. Not sure yet. I Can go find the emails I'm sure if
> there's any question as to why I'm doing this.
>
> I just loaded the newest Win 7 driver and it did find the card. I need
> to do a reboot which I cannot do until after the market closes in a
> few minutes so I'll see if the current HDSP Win 7 mixer works.
>
> Thanks for your interest and guidance.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
>

As a follow up I have rebooted the machine with the new Win 7 driver
installed and the card is now found but it is not functional with the
most current RME driver. That is not surprising as the driver readme
states I need rev 108 and I'm running 104. The 1st problem would be
that under Win 7 the firmware updater doesn't do anything so at the
moment I couldn't update firmware if I wanted to. On the other hand,
if my memory of this topic is correct rev 104 was the latest version
of firmware that works with _any_ Alsa driver for this card so I still
seem to be headed for trouble.

In the RME forums the basic piece of info I've received so far is just
that the driver has to match up with a specific version of the
firmware and that the current driver requires version 108. If the
Linux driver works (or could be made to work) with 108 then I think
I'd be OK but so far the newest Windows 7 version certainly doesn't
work with 104.

Thanks,
Mark