It's one of my fave sites ... Thanx again Chris

I had some bad experience too ... worst, being suckered into a VS1680ex at launch for a ridiculous 2k+ sum, with CDRW extra 400+, 2nd FX board likewise, plus a 4Gb HD for another 400 ... only to later find I needed to upgrade the Fw ... and having been led to believe from the outset I could connect it via SCSI to any PC ... I even bought the Datasonics software for another chunk ... and used it only a handful ...

Within a short while I was so disappointed by its inaccesibility and relatively poor quality I put it all out of mind in the loft (still there). Worse, I still grieve I traded my fave Beyer M500 ribbon to raise the cash.
On-going since, I've been quite fortunate, unlike a pal that bought one of the first DB8's for 15k and suffered endlessly for years.
My mainstays are classic RME and Mixtreme. Remarkably, both were supported to Win 7. RME only 32bit, but Mixtreme 192 64bit by SSL.
I'm very happy at that level. I'm never going to support "Windows as a service". I'm ruling out W10/11+ forever. I'm done with MS intrusive evolution.
I'm planning a project studio around XP/Win7 ...
Finding the right system boards with several PCI slots is hard.
Where's best to post info/suggestion requests in here ?