Any ideas? Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.4 , compatibility with Pro Tools LE 8

[trolleygoround]

If someone could help me with this i would be eternally grateful, as support on this issue via telephone from both mac and Avid has been fruitless.
I am in Australia, so calling avid has been difficult.

My main issue is this: I bought a legit copy of PT LE 8 with an mbox a couple of years ago, which worked perfectly well. It was, for me, expensive.
I know it's an old version of pro tools, but considering the expense, i am having trouble understanding why, all that money should go down the drain
purely because i have upgraded my computer.


As i keep reading everywhere:

Mac OS X Lion Compatibility
Please Note: Pro Tools 9.0.4 and all earlier versions of Pro Tools software are not compatible and will not work with OS X Lion (or later) with the followign exception: Pro Tools SE 8.0.3 with Patch 003.


I do not have the option, currently, to discover this incompatibility issue for mySELF considering my brand new IMAC for some bizarre reason

doesn't have a Cd Drive :) ?

so TRYing to Install PT LE 8 and mbox drivers via the installation disc is NOT POSSIBLE
until i BUY an external USB CD drive

Cannot find downloadable installation files for PT LE 8, only updates

Even if i did buy one, or did find installation files on the internet, the software will not work with Mountain Lion, as mentioned above.


So, with limited knowledge on computers and from what i've gathered from making a few calls and reading forums,

i have few options:

1. BUY PT 10.3 (too broke for that)
2. partition my hard drive into windows operating system and mac os x system (this seems dodgy, and probably involves me having to purchase the windows OS disc which will be expensive also)

3. Download a third party app for my IMAC which allows me to (use windows OS simultaneously with Mac OS?.)

The third one seems the only viable one -

unless i could somehow hack pro tools 10, which, if i had the skills, i would quite happily do considering how ripped off i feel right now!



So here are my questions,
if i were to hypothetically find a way to run windows programs on my new mac, how would i go about doing this in the least destructive way (to my computer)
and
which OS of windows should i try to install in order to install my PT LE 8?

Which programs should i download from the mac software site should i download to run windows/windows programs?

Is this going to cost a lot of money?

Will it screw up my new comp trying to run windows a system within the mac system or is it better to partition my hard drive? (which seems inconvenient if in order to switch between the two i have to restart and login each time?)


I am actually studying audio engineering, but being a student, i'm poor, and had saved up for this comp for quite some time... and am feeling royally ripped off!

[sunburst79]

Pretty sure I had PTLE8 running on Lion. I would find a USB optical drive and attempt to install it. You may also be able to download the installer from your MyAvid account and run the installer from the .dmg file. Or a networked optical or disk drive.

I don't remember the specifics of installing PTLE8 on lion other than it was a multi step process to get it installed and updated. You will most likely need to disable gatekeeper or software signing in your system settings temporarily to install PT. count on re booting and running disk utility to repair disk permissions after each update.

If your going to be upset at anyone be upset at Apple. There the ones that changed things enough to require updates.

[Ben Jenssen]

What would installing WINDOWS on your mac have to do with finding a solution???

Anyway, these are my thoughts:
The missing disk drive: take the cd to another computer, make a disk image file, and put it on a cheap memory stick.
I would never try to run PT on incompatible OS, and certainly not on possibly incompatible hardware (have you checked?). PT is exceptionally demanding in terms of system setup and stability. And I'm shure you don't want a partially stable system.
I would recommend the partition, two startup disks solution. I've used it myself for many years. Yes you will have to restart to switch systems, but there are many advantages. I quote myself from another thread:

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

If you want to use the mac for other things than protools then my suggestion is that you go for a dual-boot system. I have for years, and I always wondered why it's not more common.

It might sound complicated but it's not, and has many, many advantages.
You have two harddisks or two partitions with OSX on them.
One to boot from to use Pro Tools, and one for everything else.

This means that you can have a taylored system for protools, optimized and backed up, and can be quickly restored if something goes wrong.

On the other system you can have internet, wifi and whatever running, install stuff, upgrade OS, and mess around, and not have to worry about protools not working.

I think that would save you much headaches during the period of setting up and getting it to work, when you keep those two things sparate. F.ex when someting goes wrong with a PT upgrade, a plugin installation or the like, you restore PT disk to its previous state in 30 mins, and start over. Everything not-PT on your mac: untouched.

It takes my mac pro a minute or two to switch boot disks.

I would guess that you could install OSX 10.6 on your new mac on the PT partition, and then PT 8.0.4, but you'll have to check.

[John_Toolbox]

If this is a brand new mac that came with mountain lion installed, the OS can not be downgraded, so you're going to have to upgrade pro tools. I know from first hand experience that pro tools 9.0.4 or earlier will not run at all on mountain lion. I got 9.0.6 to work on mountain lion, and a few other users also reported success with this, but 9.0.6 is not officially supported on mountain lion so ymmv. I don't know if you'd really save much money by getting a used copy of pt9 vs. paying the upgrade fee to pt11, I think just upgrading directly to a pt11/10 bundle from pt8 ($399) would be a safer investment.

You could try running windows 7 via boot camp I guess, but I think that's going to be a headache. You spent the extra money on a mac, so you might as well enjoy using it with the mac os. I would not bother with parallels or vmware fusion, you have to buy those apps in addition to a windows installer, and they have the potential to make your system unstable. (I tried parallels a few years ago and it was not useful for anything that was cpu intensive, and caused some mac apps to be unstable).

[John_Toolbox]

Also, since you are a student, the upgrade price for pro tools will actually be significantly less. Make sure you take advantage of that.

EDIT - here's the link to the AVID store:

http://shop.avid.com/store/product.d...25865714820080

The upgrade from LE to PT11 is only $249 for students. I think that's the way to go for your situation.

[mickblah]

Hi if you still havent tried PT8 in MLion I just went thru the process and it does work as it did in Lion though I havent had time to use it in anger but if its all youve got copy the DVD to a usb stick turn off gatekeeper on the mac and go for it - then upgrade to 8.05 with avid download.

I have to set up a bunch of college macs currently running 10.6 and 10.7 with 10.8 because of QLab theatre software requirements - the cost of PT11 and the fact it wont run on the oldest machines led me to suggest buying 2/3 copies of PT11 and keeping PT8 for most basic editing work. I tried it myself on a new macmini and they run together

You may need to do a midi trick to get 5pin din midi working - I put the midi driver from 9 into 8 and that fixed it but most use usb only which is fine anyway

mcik

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Also, since you are a student, the upgrade price for pro tools will actually be significantly less. Make sure you take advantage of that.

EDIT - here's the link to the AVID store:

http://shop.avid.com/store/product.d...25865714820080

The upgrade from LE to PT11 is only $249 for students. I think that's the way to go for your situation.

Seriously upgrading to the PT 10-11 bundle for 249.00 is a great deal.