Trust 514DX - flakey?

phlash

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
195
Hi chaps, I'm wondering if any of you have had a similar issue to me regarding my delightfully cheap sound card, a "Trust 514DX 5.1 Sound Expert Optical"

I bought this card because I wanted an S/PDIF *input* to transfer audio data from an Akai DPS-12 digital personal studio (borrowed I'll note!), to my PC, without resorting to ugly analogue methods. It was a stonking 15 quid, and after some pain finding the right mixer configuration settings, it actually did what I wanted - I was happy. I replaced my aging Creative AWE64 with it.

Then I tried to play games - lockups and/or game crashes ensued :(

I tried to record Dr Who off the telly with Ulead Media Studio - lockup.

Not so happy - so I went looking for driver upgrades, only to find that C-Media (who make the chipset) offer a driver that is four revisions behind the default one in WinXP/SP1 - huh? Well I tried it anyway - and lo! Everyting seemed to work, for about a month.

Well this week the PC crashed on boot - full BSOD and memory dump style. Safe mode got it back, and disabling the sound card driver sorted the boot crash - now I can boot, enable the card and use it, but have to disable it before shutting down or it won't boot again. Tried going back to newer driver - same behaviour.

more details:
Mobo: ABit BD7-II (on board audio disabled in BIOS)
O/S: WinXP Pro/SP1 (+ critical patches)
Sound chipset: CMI 8738-MX

I've scoured t'net looking for 3rd party drivers, but found only C-Media ones, I've even thought about back-porting the Linux ALSA driver (since they hand out source code), but that's a bit extreme!

Currently I'm toying with getting a Creative SB Exigy (found a cheap source - 50 quid), or a separate S/PDIF <> USB adapter (Roland make one - 60 effin quid for a what is basically a serial/USB adapter!)

Your thoughts are welcome...
 

phlash

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
195
Thanks for trying Catsby - Those are the same drivers that come on the CD, so I suspect I'll have the same problem..
 

phlash

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
195
Just a followup to let you know that the problem seems to be sorted - and it's wasn't the sound card drivers (my apologies Mr Trust!), it was a dodgy HP / Oak Technology driver that came with some useless scanner software ("HP Memories Disc") - AFS2K.SYS.

Finally sorted it when I got a crash during normal operation and it was in this driver (AFS2K.SYS). Some Googling turned up a pile of problems with it, so I duely removed the package, after which the sound card has been working OK too. Me happy again :)
 

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