Pro I/O

[steve78]

I am going to look into the serial number thing for express stripe, however, I am thinking that once I get the system to see the drives, I should be able to format them with the disk utility on the mac os. I can now see the ul3d card, but I still don't see the drives. I will keep working on it.

The expansion chassis I have is a 7 slot SBS chassis, which I am going to use is suppose to work with this system according to the expansion systems guide on the digi site, however, I am thinking I may not have all the stuff needed to run it. I have the chassis, which has a 68 pin connector on back for hook up and the 2 foot 68 pin cable that comes with it. I was under the impression that it was suppose to hook up to one of the channels on the ul3d card. The card has a VHDCI 68 pin connector on it, which is totally different then the 68 pin connector on the chassis. When I looked on ebay at chassis, most of them seem to come with a different scsi host card that has the right connector on it, so I am guessing that because I don't have that host card, I will need to find one in order to make this work. Is this right? If so, where in the world would I find just the card?

Let me know if any one knows. Thanks guys again for all your help.

Oh by the way for any one that wants to make your own digilink cables, here is the pin out. One needs to get a cisco cable off ebay. If one gets the DB60 to DB60 cable, one can make 2 cables with the purchase on one. They run around 20-30 bucks per cable. Electro Sonic carries the HD50 scis connector (about 10 - 15 bucks) one needs to put on the end of the cable when you cut it. The HD50 connector is one that you don't need to solder, it has push on lugs for the wire, you don't even need to strip the wire.

The pins are as follows. I will put the HD50 pin first then the DB60 pin it goes to. n/c means not connected.

1 to 16, 2 to 17, 3 to 14, 4 to 12, 5 to 10, 6 to 8, 7 to 6, 8 to 4, 9 to 2, 10 n/c, 11 to 30, 12 n/c, 13 to 29, 14 n/c, 15 n/c, 16 to 60, 17 to 58, 18 to 56, 19 to 54, 20 to 52, 21 to 50, 22 to 48, 23 to 46, 24 to 20, 25 to 26, 26 to 15, 27 to 44, 28 to 13, 29 to 11, 30 to 9, 31 to 7, 32 to 5, 33 to 3, 34 to 1, 35 n/c, 36 to 31, 37 n/c, 38 to 32, 39 n/c, 40 n/c, 41 to 59, 42 to 57, 43 to 55, 44 to 53, 45 to 51, 46 to 49, 47 to 47, 48 to 45, 49 to 41, 50 to 35.

I haven't had a chance to figure what happens in the 60 pin y cable that is used to add a second i/o to a card, but when I do, I will post it.

[John_Toolbox]

The expansion chassis I have is a 7 slot SBS chassis, which I am going to use is suppose to work with this system according to the expansion systems guide on the digi site, however, I am thinking I may not have all the stuff needed to run it. I have the chassis, which has a 68 pin connector on back for hook up and the 2 foot 68 pin cable that comes with it. I was under the impression that it was suppose to hook up to one of the channels on the ul3d card.

It's not SCSI!

You need the SBS host interface card, This uses a 68 pin connector but it is not SCSI. You might be SOL if you didn't get this card, your best bet is to call SBS with the serial numbers for your chassis and see if you can find out the part number for the card you need. There were several models of these cards, make sure you can get a card that is G4 compatible(PCI 2.1) to work with your chassis before buying one.

[steve78]

Perfect, that is what I was starting to figure, now it makes all the sense in the world....

Thanks Again.

[steve78]

So I got the system up and running and it all works great. However, I have run into a new issue that I am hoping someone can shead some light on. I recorded a full drive of stuff (60gb) and when I went to record to the second drive I have (a 80gb) it came up with a window that said that the drve needed to be defragged, which I found odd since I had just installed the drive and formatted it. The drive had yet to be used. Has anyone seen this before? It is an 80gb, 7200rpm ide drive, which is same as the 60gb one that I have been using other then size of course.

[John_Toolbox]

Sounds like a bad drive, or you need to set the jumper on the drive to "slave" if it's the second drive on the same ide bus and your other is set to "master"

[otoby]

Hi John! How do I know if my d24 card (and DSP farms) are QC edition? They are Rev B. The S/N's begin with DN and FG. (also, d24 has "Rev G1" enscribed) Ive followed that thread for some time and didnt want to ask any stupid(Im not) questions, but Im humble and now's the time. Thanx! Toby

[John_Toolbox]

Toby, on the DSP farms there is a big chip that says "AMCC" on it. At the bottom of the chip are the letters "S5933Q" S5933QC" or S5933QE"
If the last letters are QC or QE, you're in good shape.

I haven't looked at a d24 for a few years, but I don't think they had this chip. I'm guessing if there were any compatibility issues with d24's the info will be somewhere in here:

http://archive.digidesign.com/support/

[milesofwire]

All farms with a "FG" serial number should be at least a QC.
A Rev. G1 D-24 card is G4 compatible so you should be good to go..

[otoby]

Ah Yes! Thanx! It was there under my nose the whole time. You guys are awesome! Thanx again, Toby (and John, Im glad to know that you also value what a great resource the digi archives are)

[steve78]

So, the system is running great. I am now running 32 tracks, and it is beautiful. I have most of the gear to take it to 64 tracks. I figured what the heck, its pretty cheap to set up, I might as well take all the way. The only thing I am short is the node cable. I have a 5 node cable that came with some of my cards, but that will only do 5 cards, in this case, 2 d24 cards and dsp farm cards, but that only gets me to 56 tracks, does anyone know if I can get a 6+ node cable, and where to find one????

Also, I am only ever tracking live shows right out of my live desk (a super modified 40ch Soundcraft 400B that I built, sounds really good), then I am mixing down through an analoge console (Soundcraft 1624, sounds awesome), 2 a stereo feed back into protools (version 6.0). Does anyone recommend a TDM finalizer/mastering plugin for this version of protools?

Once the live show is mixed down, I just want finalize it for CD so that it can be used for live albums, but still keep it in the normal dynamic range of a normal cd.

Thanks
Steve