OK, #1 thing that bugs me is that drivers for 2000 or XP will never become available according to their website. That tells me the product is not currently supported. The website says it was released in 1998 - that is anchient in computer age!
Guillemot would like to inform you that there will not be updated drivers for Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Due to chipset limitations on the card, there is no way to update the drivers. Guillemot will continue to offer support for the ISIS and the ISIS XL with Windows 95 OSR/2 and Windows 98/98SE.
The ISIS architecture was thought in '97 and the board was released in '98, before the release of XP. Maxi Sound ISIS is based on 2 processors, the DREAM SAM 9407 DSP, through which all the sound input and output go, and the ESS Maestro II chipset as a PCI controller and legacy audio compatible chipset. Sound transfers go through the ESS PCI controller to the DSP through audio buffers handled by VXD drivers in Windows 95, 98, Me, and these VXD drivers lock any other operation on the Operating Systems as long as the audio buffers have not been transferred between these two chipsets in order to avoid an operation of the OS that may cause the loss of a buffer, resulting in a 'click' in the sound track. The problem with Windows XP or Windows 2000 is that these real time OSs don't allow any driver or operation to lock the rest of the OS, so the audio buffers cannot go directly through VXD drivers, they must go through intermediary software layers which the OS can interrupt at any moment, resulting in a regular loss of the audio buffer in transit and a 'click' in the sound track. The only solution to avoid this data loss when transferring buffers under Windows XP or 2000 would be to have a DMA on each chipset to store the buffers in the memory, but SAM 9407 has no DMA, and a DMA cannot be generated by software, it requires a hardware access, so ISIS is not/cannot be supported in Windows XP or 2000. It is possible to support the ESS Maestro II audio chipset in XP, as a basic soundboard, but in no way as the DSP which handles all the studio features.
The biggest lesson I've learned in the last year is to NEVER buy sound cards that are not currently supported - you will be extremely sorry you did so down the road!
Anther piece of advice is to not buy anything that DOESN'T have WDM driver support. In this day and age of multitrack audio recording and soft-synths, you need the extra performance WDM and ASIO drivers/hardware give you.
Penny-pinching is not a good idea, especially when it comes to computers that are not used for mainstream applications (Office, Internet...)
