Is my G4 400 Good enuff or dinosaur?

[thumbolt68]

My G4 400 AGP model is loaded full to the brim w/ ram 1GB. I run OSX, PT 6 and Reason with Rewire going to an EZquest Cobra firewire 120GB. Or at least I am trying to. Is this too slow of a processor? I am getting error -9060(seems to be a firewire issue), and PT sometimes just quits. My reason session has 1 redrum, 1 nn19 and 1 nnxt. Not very heavy at all. Right now I just want get drums to track in PT while I record guitar from Pod Pro. I have my signsal path proper, but can't record more than 2 seconds before the error -9060 or PT quitting.
Thanks.

[tsd]

its funny cause i was gunna get a G4 400 when they first came out and i tried to save all my pennys, but in the end i got a cheap PC... it needs upgrading too... but in your case, you can buy a faster CPU, in mine i need a hole new system! maybe not so cheap in the end!

[homershines]

It's a dinosaur. I have one too. But, with an appropriately placed processor upgrade card, we too will be solvent for the next few years. Check some the OWC upgrade threads around here. That's what I plan to do. You may wanna get a dual process. ipgrade. But, don't spend too much money. If you do, you might as well get the highest end of the now-defunct Apple G4 dual processor computers. They are around $1,200 to $1,500.

Good luck.

homershines

for phat drum sounds & samples
contact me at [email protected]

[benlef]

There must be something wrong with your set up.

I'm using an even more "dinosauresque" 400MHz PCI Graphics(Yikes!) and everything runs smoothly.

Did some heavy things with many tracks and plug-ins, using timecode to sync laptop, driving synth, samplers and so on.

Of course I came to a point where I couldn't add a track or fx but that was a PT limitation, not a CPU overload.

[thumbolt68]

Benlef... what do you think could be wrong with my system?More details -
G4 400 AGP 1 GIG RAM (128 256,256,512- thats 1 gig+, right?)
internal 30gig IDE drive partition in half for OS9 and OSX
10Gig IDE with os9 - which I never boot to anymore.
EZQuest Cobra Firewire 120 gig for recording to
PT6.1 / Digi001
Logic 6.1
Reason 3.1.2
Emagic MT4
Nord Lead
Belkin 4port USB hub
I think I may Zero/reformat the Partitioned drive and make it only OSX maybefresh everything will help.
How do you save (where do you find)your email programs (entourage) address book if you wipe clean?

gratzi

[benlef]

I would try to allocate more memory to PT.

I would also make sure I have enough disk space.

Then I would suspect something else than PT is wrong, so I would try to record with PT alone and then add the rest of the items in your set up one at a time until I could identify a culprit.

Edit: here something I found

DAE error -9060 - a general list of potential causes.

1. Pro Tools does NOT support RAID arrays.
This error can occur if drives are connected to a RAID SCSI controller, or if drives have been striped or formatted with a RAID formatting utility such as "Soft Raid".

2. Corrupt audio files can cause -9060 errors.
In this scenario, the -9060 error message will come up in exactly the same spot in the session. A simple workaround is to set the track containing the corrupt audio to "inactive".

3. In one case, a bad Volume Bitmap on the audio drive was the cause (Disk Doctor reported "the contents of the bitmap do not agree with the locations of all files in the catalog").
Run a disk utility on the drive to check it. If an error is found, backup your data, initialize the drive, then restore your data.

4. In one case this was resolved by removing a Jaz drive from the SCSI bus.

5. In at least one instance disabling Norton AntiVirus or Norton SystemWorks caused DAE -9060 errors to stop occurring when recording to SCSI or internal drives that were formatted with Apple Disk Utility.

AND

-9060 error when recording to a FireWire drive. What extensions should I disable that were installed with my formatting utility for my FireWire drive?

1. The FireWire drive must have the Oxford 911 bridge chip and spin at 7,200 RPMs or faster to be supported with Pro Tools.

2. Format the FireWire drive with the Apple Drive Setup Utility. Formatting will wipe the drive clean; consequently, you should back up any data that is on the FireWire Drive first before erasing the disk. If the FireWire drive mounts on the desktop, highlight its icon, then choose Erase Disk under the Special Menu and choose Mac OS Extended. Click Erase. Don't forget to backup your data first!

3. Disable all extensions and control panels that were installed with the formatting utility software for the FireWire drives. Below are a list of various extensions and control panels to disable in the Extensions Manager.
Apple Menu > Control Panels > Extensions Manager. Disable by unchecking various extensions and and control panels, then restart the computer.

For EZ Quest Cobra FireWire Drives:
HDST Cartridge Mounter. (Hard Disk Speed Tools)
HDST FireWire Support and any other HDST extensions.

For LaCie FireWire Drives:
LaCie FireWire Support.
LaCie USB Support.
Silverling Pro - Control Panel.

For Maxtor FireWire Drives:
Maxtor Carbus Enabler.
Maxtor FW Support HD.
Maxtor FW Support RBC.
Maxtor USB Support driver.
Maxtor USB Support Shim.

For Phantom and Acom FireWire Drives:
HDST USB Support, Shim. (Hard Disk Speed Tools)
HSDT USB Support Driver
HDST FireWire Support, RBC.
HDST FireWire Support, MO
HDST FireWire Support.

Western Digital FireWire Drives:
WD FireWire Support
WD FireWire Support RBC

Glyph FireWire Drives:
Glyph GD1
Glyph GT1
Glyph MP1
Glyph OS1
Glyph FireWire P-Port Lib.

Other World Computing Drives:
HDST FireWire Support
HDST FireWire Support MO
HDST Support RBC

Mercury Elite FireWire Drives:
HDST FireWire Support
HDST FireWire, MO
HDST FireWire Support, RBC
HDST USB Support Driver
HDST USB Support Shim

AND

Error -9060 playing back audio in Pro Tools 5.x.

This can be caused by DAE's or Pro Tools minimum memory allocations being set to a value other than the actual minimum for the application.

- Quit Pro Tools, locate DAE in System Folder>DAE Folder.
- Single click on DAE, Get Info (command-I)
- From General Info mode go to memory
- For Minimum type in 1 and hit return.
- After you hit return it will tell you what the minimum value can be. Type this value in minimum memory field and hit return. You can use this same technique to default the preferred memory allocations as well.
- Repeat this procedure for Pro Tools in Digidesign>Pro Tools folder.
- Relaunch Pro Tools.

Note: In Mac OS versions earlier than 9.1 you could type 0 in to the memory field and type return and it would revert to the minimum value for the application. After 9.1 it reverts to the last value that was typed in the minimum value field. Because of this we suggest typing the number 1 in to the minimum memory field to bring up a dialogue that tells you the minimum value.

Hope this helps

Ben

[thumbolt68]

I think i've figured it out. Norton System works installed on my osx drive!!
even in reason I was getting an error" Cant write to file because file is locked" when tweaking ReDrum.
Uninstalled Norton and alls well for the past half hour. Yyyyippeeee

[where02190]

I think i've figured it out. Norton System works installed on my osx drive!!
even in reason I was getting an error" Cant write to file because file is locked" when tweaking ReDrum.
Uninstalled Norton and alls well for the past half hour. Yyyyippeeee

GET NORTON OFF YOUR MAC IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!

It is well known that Norton running installled on a Mac can destroy data. Run Norton only from disc, not as installed.