I was just wondering if anyone has successfully gotten a hackintosh to run a PCI audio interface. Even after installing the OSX drivers for my RME HDSP 9632 I haven't been able to get it to load. My current config is:

AMD 64 x2 +4400
2GB OCZ Mem
Gigabyte M55SLI-S4 Mobo
2 Seagate 300gb Sata drives
1 Western Digital 120gb Pata drive
Evga Nvidia 7600GT

<sigh> No pci card will work unless you have a PowerPC Mac. There are no Intel Macs with PCI cards, only PCI-E. PCI on McIntel is simply not supported by OSX, so it can't be supported on an iHack. The only very faint glimmer of hope lies in adapting a PCI-E driver to work with an older card. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Firewire and USB interfaces and on-board audio are the current working options. PCI audio doesn't work on an iHack. PCI audio doesn't work on an iHack...someone please pin me...PCI audio doesn't work on an iHack...</sigh>

Well yes and no.

It is not because they are PCI, there are a lot of PCI cards tha work, from ports (USB, FireWire, Serial), ethernet, wireless, even TV cards.

Since almost all audio suported chips are "onboard" there are no PCI cards with those same chips.

Maybe an Ensoniq ES1 card could work with the Maxxuss VMware kext.

Thanks; I wasn't aware that other PCI cards worked under OSX in an iHack. I'm lucky in that I discovered X86 when 10.4.8 cane out and installed it on a system that was practically perfect for it.

I figured the problem was simply that no OSX universal binary drivers are supplied for PCI audio cards. Are these drivers you're refering to adpated from working OSX PCI-E drivers, or are people actually writing them from scratch?

u

There were hybrid cards for both PCI for mac and pc from M-Audio.

But I don't know if the driver will work, if there is a universal driver
and if they are still available.

Anyway, in this case you should have a look at M-Audio.

Tried an SB64 PCI card once. It worked great but after awhile problems accured. I can't remember now what it exactly was. I think audio got out of sync after awhile.

The advantage was that with that card (and the drivers that i found) I had both audio-out AND audio-in working.

To the system I guess if you have soundcard with a chip that is supported it will work.

Regards,

EPDM

No, it doesn't works, that's why I'm waiting for a PCIe version of their PCI M-Audio cards.

I guess it would make sense that PCI cards wouldn't work if all the new Intel Macs don't even have PCI anymore. I was hoping that I could get my RME to work since it's a great card, but apparently lacking a UB compatible driver.

Same boat. However, RME is supposed to release their PCI-E cards along with a universal binary driver any day now: there's a very distant suggestion of a faint glimmer of hope that these will either work or be adapted to work with the older PCI cards...

I still have a RME DIGI9636 (ADAT lightpipe) which runs ok in Linux. RME have put a warning on their site it's not even compatible with a G5. Plugging it into a G5 may even damage both the card and G5 components ... blimey

No hope at all then I suppose

RME released an universal binary driver, somebody posted but I don't remember who has, thanks guy

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/info/news.htm

I wouldn't hold your breath, tbh. They seem to be doing well enough with the USB and Firewire lines of their cards (Hell, I've got a USB Audiophile in front of me and a Firewire Audiophile coming in the post - partly coz my Delta 2496 doesn't play well with my Dual 1.8GHz G5 coz of the voltages of the 64 bit PCI bus ).

This is just my opinion - I could of course be very wrong, but I don't know if there's sufficient demand to warrant developing - or at least, rushing out - PCIe versions of their lower range chipsets... Lest we forget the external versions always had a hhigher price point than the internal daughter cards.

Just my

Cmedia 8738 PCI card works perfectly

Confirmed!! Only for the HDSP series of RME cards:

http://www.rme-audio.com/download/hdsp_16c_x86.gz

However make sure your firmware is compatible to the driver version for your device.

RME does it again

use a pci 2408 and its been sooooooo reliable for so long - had to get a new chip for the PCI card when upgraded to my G5, but apart from that. Have you made sure things are installed before card was connected?

use a pci 2408 and its been sooooooo reliable for so long - had to get a new chip for the PCI card when upgraded to my G5, but apart from that. Have you made sure things are installed before card was connected?