Hercules Fortissimo III Drivers

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deannatrois

Member
I have a hercules Fortissimo III soundcard and love it.., tried vista out and found it wouldn't work and cause Hercules have disappeared there was no possibility of a driver update for vista. Now as my old pc has finally given up and gone to pc heaven, I have just bought a quad core 2 pc.., which well, I will need to put Vista on it. I could buy a Creative X-fi card but to get the seperate headphone port i want (that the hercules card has.., and it does crystal whatchamacallit sound etc, sound quality is unbelievable) I will have to pay silly money, and pay money out for music editing bits I just don't need. I have looked for something/anything that will enable me to use this soundcard on a Vista system but no luck. Does anyone have any ideas? I'd be very grateful. It just seems ridiculous to have to pay over the odds for a soundcard that does so much stuff I don't need. The Hercules card gives brilliant quality sound as I said, it just won't work on Vista.
 
Hello & welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

I'll search for those drivers for ya in a bit, but don't pay for anything - if they're for sale there, that means they exist elsewhere on the web.

Now whether or not the drivers they provide actually work or not is a whole nother story... :smile:
 
thank you., I have searched before but seeing the advice this forum gave on other graphics devices (onboard or not), thought possibly someone here might have some advice I haven't seen before. Would appreciate any help at all.
 
Wow. Thank u so much, downloaded and ready to go on the new pc.., don't quite know what to say to express my appreciation lolol. Its deanna.
 
Yes considering how old it is (it has at least a couple of years on the X-fi range lol) and the technology it used.., I am very disappointed Hercules went out of business! I supposeI will have to give in eventually (being a slight geek lol) and buy an X-fi card but I'm not looking forward to paying the inflated price lol. I have a bit of messing to do yet with the new system, swopping mobo's around etc but eventually should end up with two pc's .., one of them a top range one lol. All has to be done for minimal cost so not spending over £100 on an X-fi card for the next few months is a big help.
 
Back boo hoo

I downloaded the item on the link given above, it is the bios update for the Asrock DualSeries 4CoreDual-Sata2 mobo, which I needed anyway lol (coincidentally, that's the mobo I have on the new pc lol). Unfortunately I still haven't found any Vista drivers as such which is a shame but lol, in my dealings with this pc, its become relatively unimportant.

Ok folks, warning.., take care buying a pc from Ebay. I looked at the components commonly spec'd on ebay.., could get a quad core processor, 2mb RAM and an 8500GT graphics card.., usually on the above mobo (which is a combo design with slots for both AGP and PCI-E graphics cards). Knew the board wouldn't last me forever but it would 'do' as stated above. Checked specs and user reviews for both the card and the mobo.

Unfortunately I slipped up.., if only I'd have googled 'vista problems 8600GT' I'd have come across forums mentioning that Nvidia haven't always made their cards as vista ready as they could have done. I've installed Vista maybe 12 or so times, XP three times, different versions of each and my pc is still blue screening! I updated the bios from 1.1 to 1.5 which is specifically vista compliant but doubt its helped. Personally i think I have bought a very weak system and well, Vista hasn't really had the kinks ironed out.

The maker has just said they allow me to send it back to them and they'll check it for hardware problems but as they supposedly tested it before sending it out, I very much doubt they'll find anything to fix. So.., £450 almost down the drain as the pc is very temperamental even on XP pro. I am a good user rather than a techie but have gone thru every possible thing to figure out how to get this pc working (including downloading drivers, avoiding windows update etc etc) - feel like I've given birth to the thing with the gentle 'lets try it this way' approach I've taken lol. But with it bluescreening even using XP.., its card and then mobo replacement time.

I'm not going to buy a Nvidia card ever again (have had driver problems in the past with one on an older system) and will go for the ATI 2600pro. Reviews say its more reliable.., but reading reviews is how i got into this mess lol. Given up on the manufacturer of the PC and left them a negative review so I think my chances of getting any help from them (very difficult to even get them on the phone, they answer emails once a day only.., was quite a saga getting the thing delivered) are remoter than they were yesterday.., and it wasn't likely then lol!
 
Deanna,
I think that you'll find dodgy Vista performance with both ATI and nVidia. I switched from ATI to nVidia because ATI's catalyst drivers kept causing BSOD problems - the cards themselves are fine from the Radeon 9550 upwards for Vista performance, it's their software that's dodgy. The same goes for nVidia, their cards are fine (I find that their colour rendering is better than ATI) but their software needs a lot of work.
Their forum is at http://forums.nvidia.com/
I use an nVidia 7600GS and only have occasional problems with Vista blue screens or "your graphics card has just recovered from a serious error" type events which can be blamed solely on the software.
If you go for the higher end you have to make sure that your card has an adequate power supply and cooling.
If you go to http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp you will find Beta drivers as well as regular drivers for your card.
ATI seems to have suffered when it was absorbed by AMD. I used to have the Radeon 9550 and it worked fine in Vista - without fan cooling too which is amazing, but then that is their lowest card that is Vista compatible, if you are a gamer you would need a much higher-end card. I assume that you are talking about the HD2600Pro - it looks great, except you'll find that ATI high-end cards run very hot and eat a lot more power than nVidia's equivalent.
So as I said, make sure that your power supply is adequate and that the card has plenty of breathing space.
 
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Yeah, Peter is right.

Vista throws a hissy-fit no matter what you do - especially when it comes to drivers :frowning:
 
Thanks for the advice about graphics cards.., I'll look into the drivers for the graphics card I have so far. Just discovered that as its got a DVI (rather than DVI-I port) its the first card I've had that I can connect to my flt screen using a DVI cable (monitor won't take a DVI-I cable). So it suddenly doesn't seem quite so bad lol but still rather irritating to have bought it lol. I do have a 450 watt power supply (this wasn't specified in the eba ad and expected a 600 watt).., should i have a 600 (to make the 8500GT card run better)? I hadn't thought the power supply might be part of/the problem.

Obviously I have found out how touchy vista is, but actually am running XP pro.., a version proven as working on a friends 64bit 3600mhz pc. To add insult to injury he's actually running vista now with no probs on his pc. Its a bit slower than mine but never blue screens. Even under XP pro, I am finding that I get bsod (not as frequently as with Vista) I can't run any bittorrent software I've tried, it doesn't like Java very much either. Older games are running ok right now.., I haven't dared try Guild Wars yet. Times like this I wish I was a bit more techie lol, u never seem to know enuf lol! However cause I am running XP .., I am able to use the Hercules card that started off this thread lol.
 
From what I can read 300W is the minimum recommended power supply. If your PS isn't sufficient you'll see when you are using the card in gaming, you'll start getting flickering/freezing etc. £450...???? I can buy an 8600GT here for $120, not that I want one right now.
Until I get a new PC or at least a new MOBO I'm stuck with AGP.
As far as Vista goes, I love it and hardly ever go over to my XP boots except to update things or when I'm testing something.
 
Beta driver for XP did not help unfortunately, neither did lowering the performance stats for the 8500GT. Still can't run any bittorrent software without a BSOD. But u'r definitely right, the card has to be upgraded somehow. People are recommending the 8800 but thats way beyond my price bracket so the ATI 2600 will have to be it i think. Its supposed to be almost comparable results wise but not a techie so can only go by the testing results some reviews have given. Thank u for your help. The processor works anyway lol., I think, just annoying to have to replace the other half of the pc lol. Never ever am I gonna buy a pc from ebay again.
 
Deanna, once you get a bluescreen, you should have some files created in C:\Windows\System32\minidump\

Put the latest 2 files in a zip file and add it as an attachment to this post - I'll see if I can check what is causing them.
 
U know when u been really stupid and give that sort of nervous laugh lol?

Well play that in your head lol.

All that time i was going on about it being down to the 8500GT card and erm after thinking "I'm out of options here" this morning I decided (very belatedly) to start up the pc with just one of the two RAM sticks in at a time. First start up the pc refused to start anything and beeped madly in a way I remember only too well. Didn't happen with the other stick in. First RAM stick is consigned to the 'to be replaced' pile.

<coughs>

Reinstalled vista and windows is now working <insert strangled voice tone> sort of perfectly. Well, like its been oiled lol. No problems at all. Even downloaded/installed multiple windows updates it was having a heart attack about when I tried them one by one before. Nero installed, azurues installed and not a sign of a blue screen.

Oh well lol.., I will try and avoid thinking of all the hassle I could have saved myself if I'd thought of checking the RAM earlier.

Addendum:

Only problem is.., what do I do with my time now?

I've done nothing but fiddle with the pc for a week.., oh crumbs all this time spreads ahead of me now.., empty.

Time to buy another pc?

lol (joking lol, finances won't permit anyway) lolol
 
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well for parts... i use http://www.tigerdirect.com

they have cheap prices, but idk if they ship out of the US, that would be something ill look right now

i made my last computer, its at home with mother.... i want it back

i got a barebones from them with a Asus Motherboard, with SLi built in, and an nvidia chipset no on board graphics (thank goodness lol )
i could have up to 8 sata RAID HHD on there, plus a backmount adapter for adding two external sata HHD

i had a graphics card already a ATI something or other lol and and only 512 memory, running with XP pro it ran great! i had a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Processor - 2.0GHz, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB, Toledo, Dual-Core, OEM, Socket 939, ADA3800DAA5CD, Processor (copied and pasted from tigerdirect lol )

it never had problems with it, the case was a big one, five internal drive slots four 5" and two 3.5" 10 USB and two Firewire. Two 10/100/1000 network adaptors on board and great on board sound. a 500W power supply was more then enough and i want it back lol
 
^ yes those are cheaper... but i personally prefer Tiger, i like how much information they give you and they have a large select, from what i can tell, idk lol

i know tiger has better barebones and such and thats good! :smile:
 
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