Aureal Vortex 1 + WinXP

[Zerotech]

Hi All!

I'm finally about to upgrade to WinXP Pro on my system and have been trying to find this third-party hack/patch that I've been reading about.
My sound card is a Turtle Beach Montego A3DXstream, which has been a fantastic card under Win98. WinXP has built-in drivers for the Vortex 1 chip (so I'm still OK), but using those drivers means no control panel applet for controlling the MIDI and such. VortexofSound lists a control panel patch for XP, but all the links are dead ends.
Does anyone here have a good link or the actual files? I really don't want to dump this great sound card and I really don't want to be cornered into buying an overpriced Creative card (the next-best monopoly after Microsoft).

TIA

Z_T

{opinions expressed here are those of Zerotech and not necessarily those of Windrivers or persons with an ounce of intelligence}

[NooNoo]

TurtleBeach have an upgrade offer If the control panel applet doesn't pan out....

Found the patch here but the applications link is non functional... This is the au10dal

Suggest you email the guy and ask for the vorapp zip file.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by Zerotech
{opinions expressed here are those of Zerotech and not necessarily those of Windrivers or persons with an ounce of intelligence}

Are we sure there's a connection ?



& edit (I was too busy being 'funny' to make the point !)

If you 'upgrade' rather than ('Clean') install ... xp uses the drivers it doesn't have and 'cobbles' up some from the 98 install (if it can), & any installed apps (including control panel extensions) ought to be carried forward as well, not to say they'll work ! But you can't find that out until you do the deed ! (Upgrade advisor ought to specifically tell you if any things won't go 'forwards') ....

[Zerotech]

Thanks for the suggestions, Noo Noo. I'm going to follow up on both of them.

To Confus-ed: I put in that little disclaimer as low-level flame protection from the SoundBlaster-faithful (some people touch off even easier than I do! ). I'm definitely going with a clean install, I tried the upgrade route before ( very messy!).

The Santa Cruz looks like a pretty good card, maybe I will go for the upgrade offer.

Thanks for all the input!

[confus-ed]

Quite right too ! Best way ....

I included the 'upgrade' info just in case you were absolutely determined .....

BTW ... quote from the Turtle beach site "The Montego series of sound cards are not supported in Win 2K or Win XP." ... but I guess you'd seen that otherwise you wouldn't be looking for some 'third-party hack/patch' .... however the card itself isn't 'incompatible' ... its incompatible with acpi which is a bit different .... its like all of us & doesn't want to share (or not really) !! I have the suspicion that with a standard HAL it'll work just fine .... They seem to think so too

[Zerotech]

So far, every system I work with has ACPI disabled. ACPI has a habit of letting the video card share its IRQ which causes nasty lock-ups during 3D gaming.

A friend used the built-in drivers in Win2K with a Vortex 1 Value card and they worked fine, so I'm hopeful.

[Zerotech]

If anyone cares at this point......

The links at the Quantex Zone came back to life earlier this month and I was able to get the files there. My sound pops a bit at boot-up, but is good otherwise.

The Turtle Beach upgrade discount is $15 off a Santa Cruz card by phone order only (knocking the price down from $79.95 to $64.95 plus S&H). An OK deal, but not great.
I can hang on to my present card until I really feel I need to upgrade.

Thanks again for everyone's help and suggestions (both of you! ).

[confus-ed]

... its always 'nice' to know when someones solved their dilema ... even when they do it on their own !