Advice needed for samplecell expansion chassis

[LaRev]

Hi... I'm posting on this forum in hopes that someone will steer me in the right direction. I have 7 Samplecell cards that I'd like to put in a PCI expansion chassis. I don't have any experience with Pro Tools. What I've been using for decades is OS9 and primarily Logic of all different versions. My main machine is a G4 MDD for MIDI only. All my sound modules are hardware. I would like to drive these Samplecell cards as simply another external rack unit. Otherwise I need to run other computers only to host these cards. I want to avoid that. Can someone please give me advice on what expansion chassis I would need to do this. The G4 has PCI slots. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks a bunch!

[John_Toolbox]

I used to have a setup with 7 samplecell cards in a chassis as well.

What you will need as a bare minimum:

1. Your G4
2. a MIDI interface
3. To ensure compatibility, I would get a digidesign branded chassis. These are the black ones with the yellow pro tools 5 logo on them. There are 13 slot and 7 slot versions, usually made by magma, but I believe there were also SBS chassis that were rebranded as digidesign. Also, not all chassis are created equally. Some of the really old ones are not compatible with the PCI slots (PCI 2.1) in a G4. Make sure you check the serial number of a chassis to verify compatibility before buying.

Any chassis will need 4 things to be useful:
1. The chassis
2. The cable
3. The host PCI card (the one that goes in the computer)
4. The backplane card (the one that goes in the chassis)
A 13 slot chassis actually has 14 slots, one of them is reserved for the backplane card. The cable connects the backplane card to the host card, so without all 4 of these things a chassis is completely useless. Since these are so old now, do not buy a chassis unless it includes all 4 of these things. There are a lot of chassis on ebay that are incomplete, and trying to find missing pieces for them is usually futile.

Do any of your samplecell cards have TDM daughtercards? or do you plan on using their built in analog outputs?

[LaRev]

John .... Thank you!

1) Can you advise what serial numbers are in question? How would i verify the compatibility? Do you recall the specific chassis you had?
2) Logic has its own drivers (1-16) for Samplecell cards. I assume it will address the chassis cards just as though they were internal to the G4? I'm also using OMS, so that is an option too.
3) I got TDM cards with a couple of the cards and set them aside, since I don't use PTools. I've always used the analog outs to a mixer.

[John_Toolbox]

Your best bet on determining chassis serial numbers is to read this pdf:

http://akarchive.digidesign.com/supp..._Guide_6.4.pdf

You can also try contacting magma, they usually take a few days to respond but they have always been very helpful to me with compatibility questions.
You can also ask the seller if they used it with a G4. Thats a good way to see if they have actually tested it. I don't have any experience with the sbs/bit3 chassis, I had a digidesign branded 13-slot back in the day, which was actually made by magma.

The samplecell software generates one port per samplecell card in OMS. So once you have the chassis connected and working, re-scan for devices in OMS, then logic should see the 7 ports. I have long forgotten any idiosyncrasies of the old versions of logic, but I seem to remember this was one thing that usually worked without issue.

The TDM modules would require you to have a MIX core card inthe chassis, and a compatible interface, but allow the audio outputs of the samplecell cards to show up as Inputs inside pro tools that you can route to a pro tools interface. The advantage of this is you have more options for output format from the samplecell cards like lightpipe from an adat bridge interface, aes from an 888, or the better d/a comversion of an 888. you can also use pro tools to mix them into stems or add tdm effects like reverb, etc..

Did you happen upon any red samplecell cards/tdm modules by chance?

[LaRev]

... Thanks John. Much appreciation for all this info. What exactly do you mean by red card? A portion of it red? Or entirely red color? None of my cards are in entirely red. I never noticed any red color on them. They are all compatible with the g4. If I see anything like that I'll be sure to let you know.

[John_Toolbox]

The pc board of the card would be red instead of green. I am currently collecting red cards. The red ones are beta/prototype versions, I already have a red mix core card and it would be cool to have more matching red cards. The reason I asked is I used to have a red samplecell with tdm module that I sold a few years ago. It was on ebay again earlier this year, but I lost the auction. Thought you might have been the one who got it, the world of samplecell card buyers in 2013 is pretty small.