protools 4.3.1 on 9600 crash

[on5cit]

Hi all,
I have a (or had) a fine wirking protools 4.3.1 running on a power pc 9600. now this one starts failing. so i was thinking replacing that one with a g4 i had here on the shelf. the install was flawless, till the point of the authorization disks. the g4 has no drive anymore
now im thinking how to resolve that. buy a usb floppy and hope that will work out or find anywere a pt 5.0.1, as i understand its the final version suporting a ptIII pci.
anyone sugestions how to get up and running again?

regards,
Marc

[John_Toolbox]

There are only 3 USB floppy drives that will work with digi floppy aurhorizers. All others will lose your authorization, rendering your disks worthless.

I have one, made by vst, but I don't want to sell it because I still support a few studios that use these systems from time to time.

If I remember right, pt 5.0.1 came with both serial or floppy authorization, so if you do find a copy make sure it's the serial auth version and that you get the serial # with it.
Also, any plugins that auth via floppy will still need one of those 3 special USB floppies, iirc ilok auths weren't supported until pt 5.1... And there are still several like lexiverb that never had ilok versions.

[on5cit]

i guess the best solution will be finding a 5.0.1 version with serial key then. all my plugins i have are not authorized with floppy, so that should work

tried to get the g4 running flawless allready today. i installed 1Gb of ram on a os 9.2 and the g4 has a cpu of 800Mhz single cpu. i understood the dual cpu is not working well with pt5.x
my other spare g4 has a dual cpu. maybe i can switch that one to a single cpu also. but i heard that there exist also a patch for working with pt5.x on a dual cpu machine. that would come on usefull, the place is getting crowded with pc's and macs haha/..
but maybe both are still usefull as i have also a audiomedia card in spare. could be nice as a backup in real case of emergenies

regards,
marc

[John_Toolbox]

I've used dual G4s with os9 and pt 5.1 before. iirc, the second cpu just doesn't do anything, as os9 never had the code to be able to use it.

Not sure if it's different with 5.0.1, it very well could be an issue since 5.0.1 was never tested beyond os 9.0.4.... don't think there were any dual cpu g4's at that time.

Also, since PT 5.0.1 doesn't do RTAS... There is absolutely no advantage to a faster G4, or a huge amount of RAM. (Well huge for a G4 was 1GB or more, now a days that's less than what comes in the cheapest computers).

You may want to look at used mix core cards on ebay, they will work with your DSP farm cards, and give you a lot of advantages, not only in more DSP/voices, but also in software choices. Going to OSX 10.3 and PT 6.4.1 will give you a lot more options for additional software. Also, you can actually buy PT 6.4.1 as a download right from AVID for $35... probably a lot easier than trying to find an old copy of PT 5.0.1

[on5cit]

if multicore does indeed nothing, i hold on to the 800 g4 single processor.
and finding mix core cards, i have seen some, but my idea is just getting my old studio back running, not to do work with it, but just nostalgic. so dont want to spend much on it.
i stopped the studio abt 8 years ago. and now i start missing playing with stuff. so i only want to hobby again a bit, not to get started again.
now i started to gather some of my old materials again, like that its a start. but need to gather some more, its not yet complete yet (far from it :) ) but in time i hope to get a working setup again here. maybe some museums would like that, such old materials haha/... )
upgrading to pt6 and use mix or mix plus is very tempting, but that would make the cost to high. maybe later, who knows. but at this point i would be happy allready getting this museumpieces to work LOL
thanks for the info's and help so far
regards,
marc

[John_Toolbox]

Ptiii was by far the most stable pro tools system I ever had. Everything worked, all the time. So that's one thing cool about keeping one of these old systems alive.

Not that I'd ever go back now... there are too many new features I've gotten used to, but it's cool to see other people still using them.

[efunc]

If you still need to do the floppy install I have one of the official Digidesign sanctioned USB Floppy drives myself. I think it's an Immation Smartdisc or something, but it's not in front of me right now. I bought it when I had to do the same operation as you. Just let me know.