Upgrade suggestions?

[pd1]

I'm running 4.3.2 / Protools lll on a 9600/200 with 128 ram . Miro dc-20 for synchronous picture. It freezes more then I'd like.

I don't want to spend 20+thousand right now so where should I begin?

More ram?
Miro dc 30
Pt 24 card (s) (do I have to switch the 888 right away too?)
New Mac ?
What???

[ProdInfo]

pd1 -
What OS are you running? Did anything in your set up change prior to the freezing problem?

Your ProTools III system can be upgraded to PT24, PT24MIX or PT24MIXPlus. You can continue to use your 888 with these systems or you can upgrade the 888 to an 888|24 if you'd prefer to go all 24 bit. If you have any further questions feel free to call one of our product specialists at 1-800-333-2137.

Gregg Montgomery
Product Specialist
Digidesign

[Lee Blaske]

You're kind of in a rough spot because everything you've got could use upgrading. The nice thing about the DC-20 is that it's not a bus master card, and doesn't bog down your computer's PCI bus as much as a DC-30(+).

If you attempt to upgrade the 9600 with an accelerator (and add memory), you might find that the 128 Mb of memory you already have is incompatible with the accelerator and needs to be replaced with buffered and damped RAM. Add the price of an accelerator and 256 or 384 Mb of RAM (RAM for 9600s is getting expensive), and you're very close to the cost of a new G4 (especially with retailers blowing out Sawtooth G4/400s at less than $1,400.00). Factor in the cost of a drive failure, power supply failure, etc. in the 9600/200, and a G4 is a much more attractive option.

Remember, if you go with PT24 or Mix(+), you're also going to need a SCSI accelerator card and new audio drives, too.

If you're operating under heavy budget restrictions, it's going to be tough to make significant changes. Fix one part of the system, and you'll be hobbled by the next weak link. BTW, you didn't mention how many tracks of PTIII you're running.

How about this for a bold, radical plan:

Sell everything you've got for the best price you can get, and then buy the following:

Last year's model G4/400 (for less than $1,400)
More RAM (shop for the best price)
Digi SCSI card + drive (shop for the best price)
Aurora Fuse
Digi 001 (799.00)

Granted, it won't be a PT Mix+ set up, but you will be back in the land of the living as far as video/audio hardware and driver support goes. You'll also be in 24 bit land and have 8 more tracks than a basic PTIII system. If you have an extra $600 or so, you might consider a dual processor G4 (supposedly Digi will be supporting these in the future).

Also, if you do come into more cash, you could always sell the 001 and buy (or trade up to) a Mix or Mix+ system (or whatever new products Digidesign brings out).

Lee Blaske

[tomcat]

radical, lee. a 001...
actually that's very good advice. but...
no amount of upgrading in the world can make pt stop freezing now and then (or everyday) as everything evolves and "improves" the problems simply evolve. i have a ptp 225 with a g3 400/200, mix plus, 3940, fuse, and i am constantly threatening to become a carpenter due to system issues. i know some people say they have stable pt systems, but i'm starting to think they are plants by digi. i've never seen one.

[pd1]

First, I'm running system 8.6 (I think, I'm not sitting in front of it at the moment Maybe it's 8.6.1 or something.)

I don't know what "01" is but I have to be compatible with people running pt24. So far the only compatability problem I have had is
that the drives have to be divided into 4 gig partitions so that 8.6 can see it.

Can I run the pt24 card on the 8.6. system? (I don't think the Miro dc-20 is compatible with system 9's quicktime)

Do I have to add the accelerator card?
And, why do I need the accelerator

[Lee Blaske]

tomcat,

Sorry to hear you're having so much difficulty. I have no hard statistics on this, but it just seems to me that folks running PTP machines are having an awful lot of difficulty (see Disco Doctor's long thread on all the problems he's been having with an ATTO card in his PTP). At this stage in the game, I can't imagine that anyone is doing any serious testing of new hardware or software in PTP machines. Perhaps it's time to move on.

pd1,

The Digi 001 is Digidesign's native hardware/software solution.

If you're running PT24 or Mix(+) hardware, you need a SCSI accelerator to get decent track counts. With PT III, SCSI is handled by the self-contained SCSI built into the card(s), PT24 and Mix(+) use the Mac's SCSI bus, but the built-in narrow bus doesn't have what it takes to handle larger track counts at 24 bits. In a 9600, the common practice is to run the audio on Fast and Wide drives connected to a SCSI accelerator, and run the video on the Mac's internal narrow SCSI bus (by adding an additional internal drive to your Mac).

Running good quality video and 24 bit audio in a 9600/200 is going to bog things down quite a bit, which is why you might want to get a faster CPU. The problem here is that now you're talking about putting a faster CPU, SCSI accelerator, more memory (perhaps needing to replace your current memory with buffered and damped memory to work with the accelerator), and additional narrow HD in your 9600, and new Fast and Wide drives to hook to the SCSI accelerator. Basically, you're going to be sinking a fortune into an aging computer. That's why I think that moving to a G4 and Digi 001 might make more financial sense in your case.

I doubt that the DC-20 will work with QT 4.x. Perhaps someone else knows for sure. I do know that Miro dropped driver support for the DC-20 some time ago. As far as your current system goes, you might want to experiment with downgrading to OS 7.6.1 and QuickTime 2.5 (or maybe QuickTime 3.02). Your present problems could certainly be related to using an OS and QT version that's too modern for your DC-20.

Lee Blaske

[Noiz2]

So far the only compatability problem I have had is
that the drives have to be divided into 4 gig partitions so that 8.6 can see it.

What??? you don't wave to do that for 8.6...maybe your running 7.5. I have a 60 Gig drive one big partition and I'm running 8.6.

[Boom Chic]

If it didn't freeze so much would that be enough? Is the freezing problem the only thing bogging you down? Try to fix the freeze, that's probably the cheapest route, maybe a little time consuming but you'd be up and running for next to nothing! You could clean out your computer, do a clean install ot the Mac OS, disable all but the necessary extensions, zap the PRAM, rebuild the desktop, etc. I hope I'm not telling you stuff that you've already tried. I recently upgraded my 9600/350 to a Newer G3 500/250 and until I did a clean install of the Mac OS, it barely worked. Now it works without a hitch, going on about 4 months now. Spend some time, not money to get your system to run smoothely. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, just figure out what is making it freeze, maybe you have an old driver for the DC-20, check with the Pinnacle website www.pinnaclesys.com for troubleshooting your problem and for driver info.

One other thing, I have my video on an internal drive that I use just for video, and all my audio is on external drives attatched to my Adaptec scsi accellerator card.

Hide the video track in your sessions for smoother playback, and capture at a smaller size than 640x480 like 320x240 and drag the video window to the bottom of the screen so just one row of pixels are showing (that is if your viewing your video on an external video monitor).

Hope you get it figured out.

Karen Basset
Boom Chic Studios