PT HDX Systems going with the MAC Pro 2007 2007 1.1?

[PaulV]

So officially, Avid doesn't support running HDX in the Harpertown Macs, so if you try it things are acting unreliably, Avid Customer Support won't be able to help you. Have to say that first.

Here are the details of the issues with those machines:

The trouble seems to be caused by unreliable communication on the PCI bus on these machine's motherboards. Apple fixed it in the subsequent Macs (Nehalem and Westmere-based Mac Pros), and it was too much trouble for Avid to work around since they didn't make the machines anymore. Similar issues affect the HD Native cards too.

So there is firmware that lives on the HDX cards themselves. With 10.1 and future Pro Tools updates, PT updates that firmware that lives on the cards. If the PCI traffic gets interrupted along the way it can cause the firmware updating to fail, which can either make it take a really long time (retrying), or fail entirely, in which case you can have a board that's not recognized anymore. Now this isn't actually fatal for the board, because there's a firmware reset switch on it which will re-load the important parts of the original firmware that it shipped with so you can try to update again (preferably on another machine!).

So if you get past the firmware update, it will generally work OK most of the time (you might not even notice any problems). The issues we saw with the Harpertowns would show up during regular operation in the form of occasional hardware communication issues, which manifest as plug-ins failing to load and strangeness when doing things that create new mixers on the card, such as assigning outputs or sends; it could also affect automation and plug-in / mixer controls not behaving as expected. None of these will damage the card as far as I know, but they're a little disconcerting, and if you're spending this much on a system, it doesn't seem worth potentially wasting the effort of dealing with issues like this, IMO.

So hopefully that's enough info to make an informed decision about it all.

[WernerF]

Hey Paul, thanks for chiming in with the clarification!

[Craig F]

Paul, thanks for the detail

[Alécio Costa]

Sometimes my Mac Pro 1.1 just could not boot up with my original HD Accel Cards. I received new cards and everything went fine.

I am not sure if it is the same issue Paul is mentioning.
I had lots of problems that time.... IO of 32 reduced to 24, did not recognize properly the legacy interface, etc.

[phatbeatstudio]

Just my opinion but wouldn't they want to sell HDX to every compatible DAW if there was a way for it to work with out damaging the HDX card I think they would say so. How many more people would buy it if it did. They don't
sell computers they are selling HDX cards if were up to them they would prefer it work on all computers. It least thats what I would assume.
If they said there is a chance it would damage the HDX card or it won't work give credit to AVID they didn't sell you the card then let you find out it doesn't work or you broke it in your computer. Isn't that a good thing

[WernerF]

They didn't do that because they are nice people, they did it to avoid any possiblity of liability for damage to the cards being passed on to them.

[Wolfgang Eller]

Is PT asking for the firmware update or is it doing it automatically during the first start?

Sorry I never had that.

Or never noticed?

[WernerF]

I would hope that they ship with the appropriate firmware and only would have to updated when a revision comes out.

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by Wolfgang Eller

Is PT asking for the firmware update or is it doing it automatically during the first start?

Sorry I never had that.

Or never noticed?

Hi,

The way i read it from Paul V's post is it updates first launch. and firmware updates are included with each new PT update, so the firmware procedure takes place each PT update.

I could live with the odd firmware failure and reset, but not with the other issues with plugins and stuff playing up.


Chris

[PaulV]

Some HDX cards were built before 10.1 shipped, so they had an earlier version of the firmware and will require an update. Later HDX cards will not require an update on first use, at least until the next version of PT.