PCS-Electronics

I received my PCI MAX 2006+ in the mail yesterday after having it take forever in customs (thanks Peter for the help!). Of course, our electricity was off when it arrived and I had to wait for it to come back on before I could install the card, it was a long couple of hours!

I was able to get the card working with the 2005 driver downloaded from the web site (there was no set up program on the CD). I had to 'force' the driver since windows XP kept saying it couldn't find a matching driver; I forced it to select the 2005 .inf file and, after lots of warnings about how I might be harming my computer, it worked fine.

However, when I tested the stereo, I found that I was not getting anything in the right channel. When I investigated further, I found that even in mono mode, if I shifted the balance to the right on my computer, the audio would turn off completely. It seems like the problem is that the right channel audio is not making it to the transmitter. I checked the audio cable with my ohm meter and it's fine. I made sure that the plug was all the way in the jack on the back of the card. I also tried feeding audio from my CD player instead of my computer and got the same result: no audio in the right channel.

I would like to know if anyone else has had this problem. Should I suspect the driver or the hardware? I suspect that it's the hardware. As happy as I am with the card (the sound was really good even though it was one channel) I noticed that the soldiering on the card wasn't the best I've seen. If I can't figure anything else out, I'll pull the card and test the jack with my ohm meter. Can anyone think of anything I haven't tried yet?

Well, I removed the card from my computer and plugged the stereo cable into the back of the pci max and used my ohm meter to test it. I tested between each 'band' (ground, left and right) on the free end of the cable and the solder points under the jack on the pc board. Each channel had a good connection and there was about 650 ohms between either channel and ground.

So it looks like the plug/jack is ok but there must be something further in the circuit that isn't letting the audio through. I can't imagine that the driver would have anything to do with this problem since the driver essentially only turns things on or off, it doesn't interact with the audio in any way that I can tell.

Unless anyone has any suggestions, it looks like I'll need to send the card back.

Do you read email?

I sent you email yesterday.

Hi Marko-

I didn't get an e-mail from you yesterday but I got one from you this-morning. I'll reply by e-mail. Thanks!