Note that the installation of the drivers is tackled in our Drivers Installation Guide and problems with third party software in relation with the EWS are discussed in The Cool CuCake Forge section. Also have a look at the Software Conflicts page if some programs refuse to cooperate. You can access these sections from the Main Menu or by clicking the links on this page (see Related Topics at the bottom).

Questions and answers from the official Terratec FAQ (dated 981228) have been implemented if applicable. These topics are preceded by a small Terratec logo.

Contribution by Terratec Support

When you choose this setting, all DirectX functions will be emulated via software and not via hardware. This means, you need more system performance if you disable the multibuffer.  

Official solution by Terratec as stated in their FAQ of 11/11/97:
(Translated from German by Computer ConText and adapted for use on this site)

As long as the soundcard has not been initialized properly, the programs won't start.

More information about installing new drivers on the Drivers installation page.

For 'hanging EWS-player' see also: EWS-Player locks up.

The most probable cause: you forgot to load a soundset.
With drivers versions prior to 2.14 EWS-Player lock-ups were reported. After such a lock-up the Setmanager a cold reboot was necessary to make Midi playback work again. Note that a warm reboot is not enough in this situation: the Setmanager does not show a loaded bank, but the cards memory is still occupied. A cold reboot (switch off computer and then on again) frees up the cards memory again.

Many users encounter problems using the Midi 2 hardware port on the Frontpanel. They don't know how to activate it, they don't get a midi-signal from it or they don't know how to select it from their midi-application (e.g. a sequencer). Therefore we grabbed some information from various sources and tried to arrange it more conviniently.

General

You have to realise the following first:

• Traditionally there is one midi-interface in the computer. In the early days of the PC midi-interfaces, you bought a Roland MPU with a Midi IN and a Midi OUT port. Such a midi-interface used one IRQ and an IO-address. Also you needed to install a driver to make the connection between hardware (the midi-ports) and the software (e.g. the sequencer program).
• As the EWS also has Midi 2 IN/OUT hardware ports, this is in fact a second Midi-interface. So it basically also needs it's own interrupt (IRQ) and IO-address. That's why in the standard installation it's disabled: the installation program is so polite not to take for granted that you have those extra IRQ and IO address available on your machine. So the user decides if he/she needs that extra Midi-port. If you would never use it, it's a waste of an IRQ/IO.

Activating the Midi 2 device [edited translation from the Terratec FAQ, updated by Jörg Knitter]

• Check if one of the following IRQ's is available on your system: 5, 7, (9), 11, 12, 15. Note: Do not use IRQ 9 for ISA on a mainboard with Intel BX chipset. See Hardware Problems, Faulty or My Fault for more information about this topic.
• Check if one of the following IO's is available on your system: 300, 310, 320, 330, 340, 350, 360, 370, 380.
• If not, your might consider to reconfigure other resources or to activate the second Midi-interface without an IRQ. In this case you can use the Midi 2 only as a Midi-OUT!
• If you have a free IRQ and IO, right-click 'My Computer', choose 'Properties' and select the Device Manager tab.
• Uninstall the Disabled Midi-2 driver.
• Go to DOS.
• Run Ews64cfg.exe. This program is located in the EWS64\Eeprom directory. Choose the desired IRQ and IO-adress for Midi-2.
• Reboot your system.
• Win95 will find the non-disabled Midi-2 and ask for the driver disk (use driver cd 2.03).

Selecting the Midi-2 port from a midi sequencer

The methods of selecting the desired Midi-port varies from one program to another. If you have the second Midi-interface installed (the EWS64XL MIDI-2), it will show up in the choises for Output. The Input-options you will usually find in the Midi-setup option of the program.

For playback via a certain port you can also directly send the Midi Control Message number 94 + a value:

• CTRL 94 (0) makes a Midi-channel play at OUT-1
• CTRL 94 (127) makes a Midi-channel play at OUT-2
• Note that you have to specify this controller for each channel you want to route.
• You can 'distribute' the output of different channels through OUT1 and OUT2 by using the control message for panning: CTRL 10 (value 0-127). The values 0-127 control the pan-position between left and right, where 64 is right in the middle.
  • Set the desired port for a channel by using the CTRL 94 (value 0 or 127) message.
  • Set the panning for a channel on that port by using the CTRL 10 (value 0 or 127, we use the extremes in this example).
  • So: CTRL 94 (127), CTRL 10 (127) sends the midi datastream from a channel to OUT2 and positions it at the right of the stereo image.
  • For another channel you can use another port and another panning position.

We sincerely hope we got this all right, as we never did it before :-) Please correct us if we're wrong. The fact is that we ourselves use a midi-patchbay for years now. It's much more flexible and programmable, you don't need an extra midi-interface and you have much more IN/OUT ports at your disposal. Have a look at the Miditemp for instance.

More information on selecting the Midi-ports for playback/recording is always welcome!

Solution

• A few reboots will do the trick
• Check sliders in Control Panel (you never know)
• Check if your amplifier is on and/or your headphone is connected properly (we know: silly remark, but are you sure it never happened to you?)

Gadget:

• Record your own Start-up wave for Windows with Edison, e.g. the message 'Sound check OK'. In that case you're sure at least the Wave-section of your card works. Select this wave under: Start, Configuration, Sound, then choose the line 'Windows Start' from the list. Better than that boring standard start-up sound (how many times did we have to listen to that already: aaargghh!).

Contribution by Dave O'Flynn

There are disadvantages to running the EWS64 without any IRQ (IRQ = Interrupt Request Line). There is a big performance hit if you run your card without any IRQ. Running the card without an IRQ should only be done as a last resort. If your card uses an interrupt  then whenever it needs attention, it can interrupt the CPU and do what ever is necessary. However, if you run the card without an IRQ the driver has to constantly check the card to see if it needs anything, as there's no way for the card to tell the system that it needs attention. This is called 'polling', and wastes a lot of time, because most of the time the card won't need attention, and you'll have wasted some CPU time. This slows your system down quite a lot.

Important: only applies to 2.0x beta versions, not to 2.0 final release!

The beta drivers come with REMOVE64.EXE, an uninstaller for earlier drivers. But there is no harm in giving a piece of additional advice. This advice goes for every program you install under Windows 95, by the way.
Note: you do not have to use REMOVE64.EXE before installing beta driver updates.

• Use a good program that logs every change made to your system during an installation. Programs like Cleansweep 3.0 or Remove-It will do a good job. You have to spend some money first, but on the long run they have their pay off in avoiding a lot of frustration and hours of repairing your original setup. Also use them before even putting in the driver disk of the EWS64! These programs can help you uninstall a program that causes trouble or doesn't satisfy you. Also the 'time-bombed' shareware can be removed in a proper way.
• Uninstallers that come with the original software don't do the job as thorough as they should. Your registry will gradually pollute more and more. So use the above mentioned programs instead or in combination with them.
• Note: even commercial uninstallers generally don't back-up the original files. So if you plan to use newer versions of a program that install in the same directory as the former version, make a backup of your original directories and the registry. Programs that effect a great deal of your operating system (like Internet Explorer 4) should be handled with special care: make a complete backup of your system before installing. That's time consuming, but worth the effort in the end.

I have upgraded to driver version 2.x but the firmware is still the old one (e.g. 2.02), not 2.13.

The EWSINIT initialization program is loading an old firmware version from the EWS64 directory under DOS. To update this file simply copy the EWS64_OS.BIN file from your Windows directory to your EWS64 directory.

You should have a file called UNMUTE.EXE in your Windows directory. Once this file has been run everything should be OK again.

This error has occurred on systems on which the CD-ROM drive was not correctly installed under Windows and thus was not correctly listed in the Device Manager. Please follow the manufacturer's instructions enclosed with the CD-ROM drive.

© 1998-1999, Computer ConText, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, except for contributions made by others.

Latest update on page: 19-04-99

Latest update on page: 19-04-99