Help! ProTools 5.1.3 on MacOS 9

[[email protected]]

I actually have a mix plus plus system for sale. a core card and 2 farm cards. and a ton of floppy disc based plugins. let me know if you need anything.

Originally Posted by Qucifer

So, I've got a buddy who has been running ProTools 5.1.3 on a MacOS 9 G4 since that was a current system. He has a large psychological investment in that system, and also a lot of irreplaceable sessions saved in that format.

I've given him a little bit of help over the last couple of years, trying to make sure he's at least getting his data saved onto multiple disks and helping to make sure he's got a clone of his boot drive. I've also set him up with a newer Mac OS X system with Reaper on it and have done a little bit of work to help move him in that direction (or to any newer platform, really). But he has a whole bunch of music he's trying to finish up on the old PT 5 system before he feels ready to move to a newer system.

Tragedy struck last week. I'm not a PT 5 or a Mac OS 9 expert, but I suspect he may have a bad mix card, or something may have otherwise gone wrong with the hardware. Every time he tries to boot the operating system it pops up a dialog that says 'Sorry, a system error occurred. "DigiSystem INIT" bus error To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key'. And without extensions nothing seems to be working.

He also sent me screenshots of a couple of other errors that happened... "DAE error -6012 was encountered." "DAE error -7207 occured on DSP #3 MIX Card #1 ".

Unfortunately he's one of those dudes who probably deserved more success out of his musical endeavors then he was able to achieve... and he doesn't have a lot of money to spend trying to patch this system back up. This system kind of represents the bulk of his musical life, and he's kind of hurting.

Are there any folks out there who are familiar with these old ProTools systems on Mac OS 9 that might be able to help?

Ideally we'd really like to get his old rig back up and running. If that's not possible, does anyone know anything about what options are available for migrating old PT 5 sessions to a newer version of ProTools?

Genuinely hoping someone out there can either help directly, or might be able to point me towards other leads for advice.

Thank you in advance!

[Qucifer]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

I actually have a mix plus plus system for sale. a core card and 2 farm cards. and a ton of floppy disc based plugins. let me know if you need anything.

Thanks! It sounds like we're going to need to get ahold of new card(s) at the very least. Does it include a PT license? What version? Feel free to contact me directly to give details if you'd like.

I'm going to try and get photos of the cards in his current system (hopefully) today... once I know exactly what's in there, I'll be able to speak a little more intelligently about it.

[Qucifer]

Got a couple of new pieces of information I could use some input on. Had him pull out the cards in the system and photograph them for me. It looks like the only cards are an NVIDIA graphics card and a pair of MixCards. There does not appear to be any sort of "core" card.

I've attached a picture of one of the MixCards. Can someone help to positively identify which specific vintage of hardware this is? The picture is attached.

Next we're going to try booting up the system with just one of the mix cards at a time to see what that yields.

[Qucifer]

A closer view of the silkscreen identifying the card.

[JFreak]

MixCards look just the same for naked eye Only difference being "core" card has a sticker on the outside that says "core" and you need one of those to get the system up and running. There is a small extra chip on a "core" card but if you just take a look they look just the same.

A longer story.

Say you want to have a two card MIX system you can use two "core" cards or one "core" card with a dsp card (MixCard), but you cannot use two dsp cards without a "core" card. So point is if the "core" card has been damaged you need to replace it with a "core" card, but if the damaged one is a dsp card you can simply remove it from the system and you only get less DSP available for your sessions (also less i/o as that is 16 per card, but as you are now only converting sessions for transfer it does not matter).

[Qucifer]

Originally Posted by JFreak

MixCards look just the same for naked eye Only difference being "core" card has a sticker on the outside that says "core" and you need one of those to get the system up and running. There is a small extra chip on a "core" card but if you just take a look they look just the same.

A longer story.

Say you want to have a two card MIX system you can use two "core" cards or one "core" card with a dsp card (MixCard), but you cannot use two dsp cards without a "core" card. So point is if the "core" card has been damaged you need to replace it with a "core" card, but if the damaged one is a dsp card you can simply remove it from the system and you only get less DSP available for your sessions (also less i/o as that is 16 per card, but as you are now only converting sessions for transfer it does not matter).

Ahh! That's useful information. In the pictures he sent, I didn't see anything obvious that would indicate one of the cards as being the core card. I'll pass that along to him and maybe he can try to examine the cards more closely to determine which is which.

I _think_ this eBay listing is for identical replacements?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224402916851

[Qucifer]

I also had him keep very careful track of which order the cards came out of the system, so he could put everything back as it was.

I believe there's a ribbon cable across the top of the 2 mix cards. I believe that connects to a SCSI disk, correct? Can the core card be identified by where it sits on that ribbon cable? Is the core card at the end of the chain?

[JFreak]

Don't worry about the ribbon now. The core card should be identified with a sticker OUTSIDE of the computer where you connect i/o. The sticker should say MIX CORE. If you put them to wrong order they should still work, but i/o numbering goes crazy

[Qucifer]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Don't worry about the ribbon now. The core card should be identified with a sticker OUTSIDE of the computer where you connect i/o. The sticker should say MIX CORE. If you put them to wrong order they should still work, but i/o numbering goes crazy

I have a picture of the back of the cards in the chassis also, and it does not appear that there is any sort of sticker. Picture attached.

[Qucifer]

Could I also get a second opinion on whether or not that eBay listing looks like the correct replacements? It sounds like it's a direct replacement--one core card and one DSP card, and they appear to be the same vintage.

Unless someone here has the same stuff to offer, I'd probably have him go ahead and jump on those.