Wrap up post on this thread..... I have my 2 MOTU 2408s and the card installed in the computer. It starts to get ugly right here.

The MOTU PCI-324 card is a standard PCI form factor with the key notch toward the back, indicating it is a 3.3v card. (There's always a "however", isn't there?) However, the power requirement for this card, per MOTU, is 5v. Okay, so Eddie downloads a diagnostic tool, specs out his existing motherboard, and sees it is 3.3v across the PCI bus, as I expected. So then Eddie decided it was probably time to update that box anyway. The snag is that buying a new PC will see that new computer equipped with PCIe slots, which have the key notch in the front, the wrong form factor for the card. Off to the computer store I go. Bought a new motherboard, which they SWORE had 5v PCI slots, and I asked 4 times. That also meant that the existing Socket A CPU I had would not fit the new board, so I moved from an AMD 1.5g to an Intel 3g dual core. It also meant that the DDR RAM on the old board wouldn't fit, so I added 2gb of new RAM. Brought it all home, put it in the case, figured that a fresh install of Windows wouldn't hurt, so I did that as well. Loaded the drivers for the PCI-324 card. Shut down, disconnected power, put on static strap, installed the card.

Nothing.

Doesn't even detect it.

So I loaded that same diagnostic tool and ran it and find that the PCI slots are 3.3v despite the assurance that they were 5v. Got onto the MOTU web site and started doing even more research. It seems that the wonderful folks at MOTU buried two bits of very pertinent information. That card will not work with any RAM as new or newer than DDR, and will never work with a dual core processor. And here comes the "got 'em where we want 'em" part of the entertainment. Seems that they will be more than happy to take my card and $295 in trade and send me the PCI-424 which WILL work with DDR RAM and the dual core CPU. More reading revealed that the 324 card was designed like 12 years ago before anybody perceived that there would be double data rate RAM and dual core processors in PC class computers, so it was never designed to handle that configuration. I did make mention of one very specific thing in one of my 4 emails to MOTU, that being the fact that if the form factor is 3.3v industry standard it might be a good idea to make the card function on 3.3v. Just sayin'.....

So, for right now, I have 2 MOTU 2408s, 2 digital reverbs and a compressor all mounted in a nice new desktop rack, just waiting for the time I can come up with $300 to buy the new card to plug into my nice new computer. And a forced "Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it right now" smile on my face.... knowing that the only way this card will work is if I go backwards to SDRAM and an old single core CPU. This is my fault for not researching BEFORE buying used equipment from a guy on the other coast....


I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.