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Hallo, would it be possible to cascade 4 cards in one pc?

I've read in the past that it has been done. Only 3 cards per system are technically and officially the max but 4 cards has been used before IIRC. If it works for you when trying it then go for it; if strange things start happening to your system that will be the sign to give it up .

I've never tried it myself and I am only going off what I read, maybe someone who has done this will chime in and give you advice at achieving success with it.

Must all cards be connected to the pci?

anabella wrote:Must all cards be connected to the pci?

I'm not sure on that one so I don't have a definitive answer. Hopefully someone with more knowledge and experience on this matter will come and give the answer.

anabella wrote:Must all cards be connected to the pci?

If its not connected, how is it getting power and transferring data ?

With a Magma Box u can try Tau's solution :

http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_10/stm_mast.htm

Maybe the tdm connection is enough? Gary don't you have any experience?

3 cards is max.
there were some custom motherboards back in the very early days that did more.

I got a few custom cables made for 4 cards years ago. The word back then was, that it might work, but it was not a supported solution.

However, I never got to try it out, because some idiot engineer designer had placed a capacitor on my MoBo that prevented me from physically place the 4th card in it's slot.

So my suggestion is, you need 4 pci-slots. If you have them, try it out and if it works, great, if not, forget it and move forward

anabella wrote:Maybe the tdm connection is enough? Gary don't you have any experience?

AFAIK the STDM don't carry power - then you have the issue of re-engineering the bandwidth and protocols for data exchange. You could experiment by just supplying power to the card - but your assuming that in a multicard setup only one of x cards is communicating to the PCI bus and the rest all via STDM to that one (master) card.

It might be true, but its also a big assumption.

Do u know GaryB ?

afaik, it's not quite so simple as you suggest Dante.
I mean, basically it works as you state, but again, afaik, the other cards still have some communication across the pci bus.

Okay I forget it fast. 3 is enough.

4 cards doesn't work here.

I have 1x Pulsar 2, 3x Pulsar, 1x PowerSampler. Any of them in a configuration of 3 work properly, but as soon as I add the 4th card I get these errors...

"There is no STDM connection from Pulsar (brd 1) to Pulsar 2 (brd 0). Please check STDM cable connections."

I tried 3 different STDM cables (2 made by me, one provided when I purchased another set of cards). They all work with 3 cards, but adding the 4th blows up.