On Sat, 2013-03-09 at 09:00 -0800, Len Ovens wrote: > On Sat, March 9, 2013 4:30 am, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > > This drive should be used as a backup media only, but I'm thinking to > > buy an additional external hard drive for recording, to be able to visit > > a Windows user (Mac became seldom here :), but to boot Linux from the > > drive and to record on the drive. > > Sounds like fun :) now the amount of ram in an unknown system comes into > play. Assuming you are taking a USB audio IF, then USB irqs have to be > looked at before deciding where to put the IF, USB stick and drive (DVD > might in this case be better than USB stick, though the USB sticks seem to > be more reliable). I personally have not had any problems a USB drive > being in a USB port that shares irqs while recording, but I can not say > for sure that a write or read was forced while I was recording. Yes, there are several weak points. I e.g. would set up an install using the vesa driver. RAM today usually isn't an issue, but the sound card will be a serious issue. I'm thinking of some musicians who don't use the computer for music them self. Modern PCs with Windows 8 with some integrated audio device. I only want to be able to play at least a stereo track (a temporary mix of a production with much more tracks) and to record some tracks with microphones for drums. Perhaps it's needed to use a mixer and to record a stereo mix, I guess onboard surround devices can't record more than stereo, especially in duplex mode. It would be easy to at least visit one friend living close to me, perhaps 1 km away, disconnecting and carrying the tower would be too much work, but taking an USB drive, it would be an easy and short walk only. For my mobo I noticed that the default USB slots don't share IRQs. When I bought the USB drive I also bought a sheet with two USB slots, since there are 3 double-sockets for 6 additional USB slots. I bought a sheet with 2 single jacks, instead of one double-jack. When I tested all the 6 additional ports, I noticed that 2 are free and 4 do share IRQs, 4 ports I usually unbind. Perhaps vendors of mobos take care that the ports that are available by default, seldom cause IRQ issues? FWIW, the 2 additional ports I can use are provided by one double-socket, so there was no need to buy the sheet with 2 individual jacks (missing the polarity protection a double-jack has got). There's the possibility to use 4 + 6 USB ports, but to avoid a shared IRQ with the RME card, I only have 4 + 2 ports. If vendors are smart, they always put the ports that share an IRQ to the by default unused ports on the mobos. Regards, Ralf _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
