I'm Just Sitting Here Watching the Wheel Go Round and Round

That was pretty much the story of the evening anyway.

I'm testing out the spare CPU for the d8b, but the BIOS settings had been corrupted, so last night I pulled the battery so they'd clear and I could try resetting them. I was rewarded with the BIOS screen today, but then made an error when playing with the BIOS and it was time to pull the battery again. *sigh*

Meanwhile, it was time to power up the studio computer and see if I could get the new audio interface running. I'd already installed the recommended SIIG Firewire card, so it was route monitor cables, USB cables, keyboard cables, and mouse cables under the console and plug them all in. Then I plugged in the assorted dongles, the network cable, the lovely new Firewire cable, and booted things up.

Sadly, I'd gotten the keyboard and mouse cable reversed. More no-longer-needed extension cables were removed, the cables plugged in correctly, and the system booted again. Then, following the instructions for the Firewire card, I installed the drivers from the CD.

Then I installed the plug-ins for the new audio interface from the website.

Ok, now shut down the computer, turn on the audio interface, and restart.

The computer rebooted, saw the new device, went looking for drivers and failed.

Oops.

I rebooted a couple of times, fiddled around with the partially installed devices, and generally had less than no luck. The company's website was of no help, so I went Googling and noted that someone had complained about a problem with his Firewire drivers and this device.

Fine. I opened up Device Manager and updated the drivers for the Firewire card.

And look at that! The audio interface started installing itself. Eureka!

(Apparently the instructions from the interface manufacturer should have said, "Buy this particular card, but don't install the drivers that come with it, because we don't work with them." Live and learn.)

Once the interface was installed, it then downloaded and installed a firmware update.

Then I went on the website, registered the interface, and downloading the authorization code for the plugins.

While all this was going on, I also uninstalled the software for my old, now removed, RME RayDAT card. And I downloaded the twenty Windows updates that had accumulated. And updated my antivirus software. And read my e-mail.

Anyway, it looks like the interface is ready to go, so now it's a matter of reconfiguring Cubase to use it.

And attaching all of the rest of the wires.

There are a great many wires.