Pro Tools III & hardware

[HSLand]

I didn't find any documentation on this so let's see if you can fill the gaps.

What's the difference between a Project and Disk I/O card? I have some cards here but there aren't any serial numbers on them.

Is it necessary to have a SCSI drive hooked to a Disk I/O for it to work? I was hoping I could use it as a strict I/O card and record onto my internal drive.

Does the Disk I/O have any TDM chips on it? And can it be used by itself, or is it necessary to have a DSP farm tied to it?

I read on an archived Digidesign page that not all DSP farms will take an audio interface. Why is that? Maybe the PT III DSP farms couldn't but the later d24/PT 24 DSP farm could.

[Craig F]

how old a Mac do you have?
the Macs of the area of the 3 hardware has slow SCSI buses, hence the Disk I/O cards
and I think PT 4 was the last version to support the 3 hardware
we are taking hardware that pushing 20 years old

[HSLand]

I have a 9600. I read in the Pro Tools 5 manual that PT III hardware is supported up to 5.0, but 5.1 and later doesn't support it.

The reason I ask is that I got handed about 5 Disk I/O cards and a Project card or two. I'd like to be able to at least test this stuff and see if it works.

[John_Toolbox]

The project and disk IO cards look identical, but the project card will not work as a TDM core card, it was used with session 8 software iirc.

To test these, you need at least one interface (888, 882, etc.), a copy of PT 5.0.1 or earlier, at least 1 DSP farm, an external SCSI drive, and the special SCSI cable (VHDCI-50 to centronics) that connects the SCSI drive to the disk IO card. You can run up to 3 disk IO cards, each disk IO requires a dedicated SCSI drive and will handle up to 16 voices so the max voice count is 48. There are no RTAS plugins in 5.0.1, so you will need a lot of DSP farms. My old PTIII system had 3 disk io and 5 DSP farms.

The cards are of no use without the special scsi cable(s). These systems will not record to anything else, I don't think PT will even launch without a drive connected to the disk IO. They also will not record 24 bit, so 16 bit only. I will say that while very limited by todays standards, these systems were incredibly stable. But there are so many advantages to the MIX cards, I don't think these will be worth it unless you already have everything you'll need.

[HSLand]

Very informative, thanks.

I'm guessing that each Disk I/O card has TDM chips on it. It makes me wonder why a DSP Farm is required to get the rig running.

The 888/24 is compatible with the Disk I/O, so I guess there's some truncation going on if it's only recording at 16bit. My 888/24s are 24 in and out.

The Disk I/O can handle 16 voices, but I guess it can only take 8 ins and outs and a Y cable won't work with it.

I was also wondering if a DSP Farm could take an interface but it seems that only certain ones can. Would it be correct to assume that the older PT III DSP Farms can't take an interface, but when the d24/PT 24 stuff came out, the DSP farms were able to take an interface?

I have a cable here but no adapter. Just bought one off of Ebay and will use an old Jaz drive to see how I fare. I'll go take a look at my old software and see if there's some kind of Digidesign formatting utility floating around in there. Maybe it works with any OS Extended Jaz cartridge though.

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by HSLand

Very informative, thanks.

I'm guessing that each Disk I/O card has TDM chips on it. It makes me wonder why a DSP Farm is required to get the rig running.

It has A TDM connector, but no DSP chips. The TDM mixer requires DSP chips to run, hence the need for a DSP farm.

The 888/24 is compatible with the Disk I/O, so I guess there's some truncation going on if it's only recording at 16bit. My 888/24s are 24 in and out.

The speed of the SCSI connection on a disk io is ridiculously slow, that is the bottleneck, it is saturated when you get to 16 voices @16 bit. The d24 core card (released between PTiii and MIX) got around this limitation by allowing you to use a separate SCSI controller.

The Disk I/O can handle 16 voices, but I guess it can only take 8 ins and outs and a Y cable won't work with it.

Correct, the Y cable only works with d24 or MIX cards, it will not work with DSP farms or disk IOs

I was also wondering if a DSP Farm could take an interface but it seems that only certain ones can. Would it be correct to assume that the older PT III DSP Farms can't take an interface, but when the d24/PT 24 stuff came out, the DSP farms were able to take an interface?

AFAIK, all PCI DSP farms are capable of 8 IO. Not sure about Nubus. All PCI dsp farms will work with either PTIII, d24 or MiX core systems. The only significant difference on DSP farms was PCI 2.1 compatibility... Basically, any DSP farm, Disk IO, or samplecell that does not have a rev QC or higher AMCC chip will not work in blue G3 or any of the G4 computers, they will only work in beige macs. Your running a 9600, so this will not be an issue.

I have a cable here but no adapter. Just bought one off of Ebay and will use an old Jaz drive to see how I fare. I'll go take a look at my old software and see if there's some kind of Digidesign formatting utility floating around in there. Maybe it works with any OS Extended Jaz cartridge though.

I can't remember how that worked, but I don't remember needing any additional software to format the drive. The drive did mount to the desktop with a custom icon that had musical notes on it, my guess is a special driver was installed with PT to handle that.

[HSLand]

http://archive.digidesign.com/compat...mix/cards.html -

DSP Farm*: DSP Farms with serial numbers lower than FG10501 may be used for Plug-In operation but do not support connection of an Audio Interface.

I guess the only way to check, is to check It's weird that these older Project and Disk I/Os don't have a serial number printed on them. Some do, some don't.

I have the adapter on the way so we'll see. I actually ran the SCSI cable from the Disk I/O into a CDROM, then from the CDROM into the Jaz drive, but without success. Maybe it won't take anything but SCSI HDs in the chain.

Thanks again.

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by HSLand

http://archive.digidesign.com/compat...mix/cards.html -



I guess the only way to check, is to check It's weird that these older Project and Disk I/Os don't have a serial number printed on them. Some do, some don't.

I have the adapter on the way so we'll see. I actually ran the SCSI cable from the Disk I/O into a CDROM, then from the CDROM into the Jaz drive, but without success. Maybe it won't take anything but SCSI HDs in the chain.

Thanks again.

Iirc, each disk IO can have up to 4 SCSI drives. Make sure you use an active terminator. There might have been certain SCSI device IDs that were needed too. The documentation for this might still be on the archive.digidesign.com site.

[JFreak]

Why the ancient hardware? JT already gave you much more tech support that the hardware is worth of...

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by JFreak

JT already gave you much more tech support that the hardware is worth of...