Suggestions For a 9600 TDM system build

[Basshead3606]

Hi, I have been collecting TDM parts and have a d24 card and 2 dsp farms. I plan on putting it all in a 9600/300 mhz with a sonnet tempo trio card for the drives. Has anyone had any experience with ata drives and protools in a 9600? Does anyone have any tips or suggestions of any sort that can make things easier for me? All replies are greatly apprecaited. Thanks, Chris

[EarHole]

Well, I'm getting rid of pretty much the same system this week. Mine has been a workhorse for years but it's time to upgrade. I don't think the ATA drives are going to cut it my friend. The internal bus and processor just can't push that kind of data. I would go with a Ultra SCSI system. I'll probably have an extra card when this is all done. I'll let you have it for next to nothing. The drives are more expensive then ATA but well worth the $ for the preformance. I run 10k rpm cheetas on my system right now and they are solid. I may also have a few farm cards avail. Let me know...

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[Basshead3606]

Does anyone else have any tips or suggestions? Boom Chic, can you offer any advice. Thanks again, Chris

[TimDay]

Yup. Go with UW SCSI. I went down that road with a 9600/G3/Mix Plus. The SCSI JackHammer card I put in made all the difference.

[rockridge]

Originally posted by Basshead3606:
Hi, I have been collecting TDM parts and have a d24 card and 2 dsp farms. I plan on putting it all in a 9600/300 mhz with a sonnet tempo trio card for the drives. Has anyone had any experience with ata drives and protools in a 9600? Does anyone have any tips or suggestions of any sort that can make things easier for me? All replies are greatly apprecaited. Thanks, Chris

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I'm using the Sonnet ATA/133 card and the G4/800 upgrade card in my 9600... works like a champ.

[Andre Knecht]

Originally posted by Basshead3606:
Hi, I have been collecting TDM parts and have a d24 card and 2 dsp farms. I plan on putting it all in a 9600/300 mhz with a sonnet tempo trio card for the drives. Has anyone had any experience with ata drives and protools in a 9600? Does anyone have any tips or suggestions of any sort that can make things easier for me? All replies are greatly apprecaited. Thanks, Chris

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I have the following available:

9600/350
Sonnet G3 400MHz
192mb RAM
Adaptec Dual channel Ultra2Wide
Gefen Extender System (analog) with 50' cables
19" CRT

This system, along with TDM Mix++ hardware, was the heart of my system, which mastered quite a few records. As such it worked (and still does today) flawlessly until the I uptraded Mix to HD. I am simply eager to get this out of the house -- see phone number and email address below.

[stereo type]

I have essentially the system you're talking about and tried about every configuration possible. SCSI card worked fine for me until I wanted bigger drives without paying SCSI prices. I installed a XLR8 FW card, put a 60GB FW (Oxford 911 chipset) on it and never looked back.

Bear in mind, I do mostly mixing here; not much tracking other than overdubs. While I get full 32 voice + virtual track count off this drive with heavy editing, things would probably be different trying to use multiple drives or record high track counts. In those cases, SCSI is much more steady.

Some things to know about the 9600: interleave your RAM. The 12 slots are in 6 pairs; place matching RAM sticks in A1/B1, A2/B2, etc.

You didn't say if you had a CPU upgrade. If not, life will be much better with one. I've had Newertech, Sonnet and Powerlogic. Newer Tech was the only one that was reliable for me. But you'll probably only find Sonnets unless someone's selling a used Newertech.


Should you install a FW card, use the drivers from OS 9.2.2. The ones with 9.1 are unreliable ( You are aware that OS 9.1 will be as high as you can go? There are some workarounds and apps to get 9.2 on it, but don't bother.....It's VERY unstable and no real benefits)

If you use a cd writer, I've always had better results placing a SCSI burner on the Mac external SCSI rather than adding it to a SCSI card chain. You may not be able to get as fast a write speed as available on todays writers though with the lesser bus speed on this old model. Replacing the internal cdrom with a writer will work also. But if there's already an internal cdrom there, it's handy for just reading discs. Some installs (like Waveburner) ask for the original cd every so often. They sometimes won't reauthorize from the external bus.

There was a time that I even ran the drives in reverse without a SCSI card; I placed the system drives on the external bus and the audio SCSI drives on the internal ( the internal bus is faster). It actually worked great, except that it made my external cd writer bog down. Just an interesting fact; definately not a recommendation.

These are still great workhorses if you just need to do audio and can live awhile longer without soft synths, PT 6 or OSX; although I can actually run 1 instance each of Stylus and Trilogy RTAS plugs on my 9500 G3/300 upgrade while a full mix is going without it bogging down too much.


anthony
Stereo Types

[Basshead3606]

Thanks for all the replys. I went ahead and got a Western Digital 80gig 8mb cahce and set it in there. It seems to be just fine. I am planing on leaveing the os on the 4gig scsi drive that it came with. Is this ok? I am also looking at getting a g3/500 upgrade card from sonnet, has anyone ever used this card? Will it work? Can I still use all six pci slots? I cant wait till I can get an interface! I want to start recording. Thanks for all the help, Chris

[rogdrepairman]

Originally posted by Basshead3606:
Thanks for all the replys. I went ahead and got a Western Digital 80gig 8mb cahce and set it in there. It seems to be just fine. I am planing on leaveing the os on the 4gig scsi drive that it came with. Is this ok? I am also looking at getting a g3/500 upgrade card from sonnet, has anyone ever used this card? Will it work? Can I still use all six pci slots? I cant wait till I can get an interface! I want to start recording. Thanks for all the help, Chris

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hi Chris,

My system is:

Mac 9600/Newertech g3 300mhz/512mb RAM
Sonnet tempo trio
External firewire enclosure (oxford 911 bridge)with a Maxtor 160 gig 8mb cache 7200 rpm drive
USB optical mouse (love it....worth mentioning)
was a d24 core (although I recently upgraded to a mix core)
2 DSP farms
888/24 and a 1622 interface
OS 9.1

Obstacles:
Disabling TCP/IP solved a system freeze up/lock up problem, had to download a special DAE from digi (on downloads page) to allow the 1622 interface to work, used firewire enablers from OS 9.2.2,
used recommended optimal protools settings...and maybe a few other tweaks I have forgotten....

End Results:
When I attached the Maxtor IDE drive directly to the sonnet tempo trio card (and formatted it with atto express pro tools), I would get an annoying 1-2 second hesitation when hitting play or record. (I may not have had the optimal settings adjusted properly at that point) With no other changes, I installed the same drive into the external oxford 911 firewire enclosure and (big smile!) it worked flawlessly...32 tracks, no hesitation.(with the mix core I once pushed it to 40 unedited tracks) I use the external firewire drive exclusively now. (OS is on the internal 2 gig SCSI) I ditto what many have said here...With the convenience and affordability of IDE and firewire...."dumped SCSI and never looked back"

Yes, you should be able to use all six PCI slots with a processor upgrade(it has its own seperate slot). A faster processor should(?) allow you more instances of RTAS plug-ins. I have heard questions raised about stability issues with Protools and faster processors in the older Macs. I would like to know the answer to that question myself. Incidentally, I have an 8500 with a newertech g3 400mhz running protools free....the audio drive is a 9.1 gig scsi SCA (80 pin Cheetah) with an 80 to 50 pin adapter, hooked to the internal 50 pin secondary scsi bus.......works great!

Wishing you success!

[Basshead3606]

Well, I have been using this system since saturday, and I can say that it works almost perfectly. I havent even optimized the machine yet. I put the cards in and started doing transfers from the 1" tape into pro tools. I did this for about 2 hours and not one problem. I cant wait to get a firewire drive and try that, but for now the sonnet tempo trio card ata bus is working just fine. I am going to do a clean install of the os and all the apps in the next day or so and see if it makes any difference. Thanks to everyone, Chris