On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 1:59 PM, raf <rmouneyres@gmail.com> wrote:
>> From: Iain Mott <mott@reverberant.com>
>> I tried another slot (there are only 2 pci slots on the mother board),
>> but the same thing happens. It required about 3 boots to get the
>> firmware to load. I hope it's not a problem in the RME PCI card itself.
>
> You could try checking whether the PCI card is detected in the cases where
> the firmware is not loaded.  It is PCI and not PCIe?
> Compare the output of lspci in the good vs. failing case and verify that
> the PCI card is detected, because the driver will never load and attempt
> to find the external interface if the PCI part of the interface is not
> detected.

that's a good spot Chris, I tend to have that very same problem from time to time with a HDSP PCI card, i suspect my PCI extender to move in the rack and the card sometimes not being detected at all on startup.
It also mean I have never find a real solution to this because i suspect the hardware, so sometimes i open the rack, move the card, and reboot.
Lain, if you're in the same situation, make sure the card is properly inserted and aligned in the pci slot.

it may or may not apply to you, but this is required reading:

    http://www.rme-audio.de/en_support_faq.php?page=content/support/en_hdsp_pci

i just "lost" my HDSP card, which was a rev 3. no idea if it caused by the same problem - it had been working in the same computer for several years.