multiple Problems with PT HD1 Mac

[black dirt]

hi

i have been running a stable pt setup for about 4 years until recently. started to get RTAS CPU memory errors... so i upgraded my RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB (Description: 2GB kit (1GBx2), 184-pin DIMM Upgrade for a Apple Power Mac G5 (Dual 2.0GHz DDR, 4 DIMM sockets) System)... still getting error message - but also, when i replugged my digilink cable back in pt would only give me white noise when i opened a session, and all the meters would be flickering (even with no input)... so i went out and bought a new digilink cable - didn't help... so i reseated the core card... pt worked fine for a minute, then the audio started cutting out... so i trashed my preferences... like 5 times! finally i moved the card from pci slot 1 to slot 2 and it seemed like the problem was solved...


then the other day, at the beginning of a session, just as i was recording a client briefly so they could come and hear what they were sounding like, pt stopped recording, the audio files disappeared, and the program crashed. when i tried to restart, i got multiple errors including DAE "unable to communicate with the audio interface," "digital clock sync was temporarily disrupted," and the insane Neo Assertion error / novella... pt was responding very sluggishly while these errors were showing up and through various restarts... then on the 3rd or 4th restart pt crashed my mac...


so while the client waited i went to my personal computer - downloaded OS 10.4.9, upgraded to pt 7.4 and was able to get the session back on line - but over the next 2 days while recording i had the strangest thing happen - while recording 2 tracks i had 1 track drop audio and flatline while the other had a nasty spikey snat where the drop out was on the first track... but i couldn't see this unless i zoomed way in and the snat when zoomed in upon was gigantic and when i zoomed back out it disappeared, zoom back in - giant! - - - and on a later take of a different song i had all the tracks dropping audio to a flatline (leaving snats in their wake) 3 times over the coarse of 2 and half minutes - a handful of other snats, clicks, glitches continued to pop up through the night...

here is my info

PowerMac G5 2GHz

OS 10.4.9

RAM - 4GB (recently upgraded to 4 GB from 2 GB to combat RTAS errors) from Crucial - DDR SDRAM PC3200U-30330

FW Bus - 800 - Glyph 050 Q - 4 x 116 GB partitions journaled
400 - LiquidMix v. 2.3.16 - target LM 2.3.4

USB - Bus - Bluetooth HCI
Hub - Ilok
Tascam US2400

ProTools v 7.4 (upgraded from 7.3 to combat these issues)
192 i/o
Apogee Big Ben (purchased recently)

i've trashed preferences and databases, i ran a digitest (no problems)

please help....!!!!
thx

[KingFish]

Man - this sounds like a HW issue, "Card seating", or "Contacts" on the HD Core Card that fit into the PCI slots.

Run "DigiTest"

Let us know what IT tells you.

Macintosh HD/Applications/Digidesign/Pro Tools/Pro Tools Utilities

If it's not installed there, you can Run your PT installer, and select it under Options as shown BY "THE DUDE" IN THIS POST

OR - you can dl Digitest separately FROM HERE

[black dirt]

i ran digitest - everything came back fine - no issues at all with the card...

[s.d. finley]

Disable Bluetooth and the USB hub. Try running PT with as few
other devices hooked up to your mac. Slowly add devices back. see
What happens. BTW, I am using the same
G5 over here.

[black dirt]

well, tried to get back to a mixing session tonight after tracking through the above problems the last 2 days and now i am getting the -

"DAE can't get audio from drive fast enough. Drive may be too slow or fragmented, or a firewire drive could be having trouble due to extra firewire bandwith or CPU upload."

error about every 30 seconds of playback... this is basically killing any workflow and starting to get very stressful...

would upgrading to hd2 help these specific issues at all?!?!

this is like an all out error assult - not one issue it seems... i'm dying over here!

[crizdee]

Hi,

you need to approach this from all angles!...

first take everything out of the equation thats not needed!! the liquid mix and other connected peripherals.

Try removing the new ram you fitted. adding extra ram isn't really dealing with your RTAS issue, as RTAS is much more about CPU processing power and not memory.

The latter problems you are having seem to point towards hard drive problems! can you put a new hard drive inside the mac solely for recording audio!

Re-seat your core card again and use PCI slot 1. even clean the pci card contacts gently with some switch cleaner.

Lastly and most importantly! completely re-install pro tools. first uninstall doing the "clean uninstall option" from the uninstaller in the digidesign folder in applications. then repair permissions, reboot the mac and then re-install PT.

Chris

[s.d. finley]

As far as the Hard drive issues. I normally have my partitioned drives no bigger than 40 gigs. This makes read/write times faster, as there is less physical space for the hd head to cover.

Take Crizdee's and my advice. Start yanking peripherals that aren't needed to run a bare bones HD system. See how that works. If not yank the new RAM. Go from there.

[soundboy35]

I'd also go back to the original RAM, as well as cleaning the card. Sounds like the card could be bad. We just had a PCIe Core go bad, even though it passed Digitest. It was doing some of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in a session. Turned out that one of the tiny, tiny chips on the bottom back of the card had broken off.
Maybe also try recording a session to an internal drive in the Mac, but not the OS drive. See what happens.

[black dirt]

hi everyone
thanks for all the advice so far
i think this may be a bermuda triangle of problems

1 - the early issues may be a core card problem - i'll clean and reseat tonight (though i haven't had any of those issues the last few days)

2 - i removed all the peripherals i could (my wireless keyboard and mouse wouldn't work w/o my bluetooth plugged in) esp. liquidmix (uninstalled) - someone had told me that even tho' my fw800 port and fw400 port were on the same bus i could safely plug my external drive to the 800 and liquid mix to the 400 - but poking around the focusrite site today i found that they do not recommend doing that. i'd like to get a separate fw800 card for my external drive - can anyone suggest a good one - i was looking at this one - http://siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=NN-830012-S2 - but i'm worried i'd have to split power from somewhere else in the computer (cd drive) - this makes me nervous

i did a clean uninstall of pt and reinstalled 7.4

3 - so i opened a session w/o any liquidmix instances and 9073 dae errors persisted every time after about a minute... in the midst of the barrage of different problems i've been having i didn't realize that i had this same dae error problem at an earlier date...

i have 3 external drives - the glyph and
1 lacie 250 gig - 3 partitions - never had a problem
1 lacie 500 gig - had 4 partitions ... i had a band up here to mix in the fall of '08 and started getting crazy dae errors - embarrassing - thought it was a problem w/ the drive - had a solo gtr tracking session right after and got thru that session but immediately after a band was coming up to cut an impromptu record with the guitarist - btwn sessions (literally 1 morning) the drive started to completely fail - pt would hang up, then the whole system would hang up, i lost 3 random wav files... i could only get files off the drive 2 or 3 songs at a time or the system would hang up... in order to facilitate the session that afternoon i ran out and bought my glyph drive because it was digi-approved... i contacted lacie, after some diagnostics they said it wasn't a hardware issue and to clear the drive and reformat which i did, but since i had the glyph i was hesitant to go back to it - they must have been right because now 3 or 4 months later, i am having the same problem with the glyph (at least the dae side of it, tho' i'm terrified that by the end of the night the glyph will stop responding...)

i don't know what is causing this - both drives started to fail after less than 6 months in the studio (while the 250gig lacie continues to be fine) - any ideas? too few partitions?

anyway, i've partitioned the 500gig lacie into 10 partitions and i'm going to bring over all the files from the glyph.... then repartition it

i'm going to clean the hd card and reseat

and can anyone recommend a fw 800 card (if not the siig) and do you think i'll need to split power to it or do you think it can pull enough power from the pci bus? (all 3 external drives have their own power supplies)

thx in advance for the continued help!

[black dirt]

Originally Posted by soundboy35

I'd also go back to the original RAM, as well as cleaning the card. Sounds like the card could be bad. We just had a PCIe Core go bad, even though it passed Digitest. It was doing some of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in a session. Turned out that one of the tiny, tiny chips on the bottom back of the card had broken off.
Maybe also try recording a session to an internal drive in the Mac, but not the OS drive. See what happens.

soundboy - how'd you find out it was a physical issue with the core card?