PT LE closing in middle of session

[nothingface]

I've been having recurring problems with PT LE telling me that "PT has held off system interupts for too long" as well as "system underun errors". This has been going on for a while and I have tried everything that I can find in the forums to fix this, but nothing has helped. Now PT has begun closing by itself in the middle of my sesions as well. I have a digi002 rack with an Apogee Rosetta 800 and I'm using an Apogee Big Ben to clock everything.My system is a mac G5 dual 2.5 with 4 GB of RAM with all system versions updated (OSX panther). I'm using a Glyph GT050 external drive. It seems like the longer I'm working in a session, the more likley that I begin to get errors, and once it starts, nothing seems to fix it. Got any ideas?

[Avid]

Here are a few things you can try that might help...

This is an Answerbase item on that error on OS X:
http://answerbase.digidesign.com/detail.cfm?DID=28939

Error -6093 operating system held off interrupts for too long.

If you frequently encounter a -6093 error, increase the Hardware Buffer Size. (Setups menu > Playback Engine).

Taken from the Read Me for Pro Tools LE v6.7 for Macintosh (Item # 4677

I would also check a couple of other things...

Check your record allocation:
http://answerbase.digidesign.com/detail.cfm?DID=29145

Spinning beach ball when recording to 200GB or larger volumes with Pro Tools 6.4 and higher on OSX.

This is a known issue when performing unbounded recording to many (i.e. 30+) tracks after several (10+) record passes. The SWOD's last as long as 45 seconds, and the problem doesn't go away until files are deleted from the target disk drive.

Workarounds:

- Use Apple Disk Utility to partition the hard drive into smaller volumes (note: you will need to backup the contents of the drive first).

- Go to Setups/Preferences/Operation and set Open Ended Record Allocation preference to XX minutes rather than Use All Available Space. 30 minutes or less is ideal.

When performing an unbounded record, Pro Tools pre-allocates a 2GB file for each record track. Performing multiple record passes unavoidably fragments the disk volume. As the disk becomes more fragmented, it takes the OS much longer to locate free disk blocks during pre-allocation. This is true on Windows as well as on the Mac, but due to the design of the Mac's HFS+ file system, the problem is much worse on the Mac.

If your drive is fragmented, you could try running a disk utility on it like DiskWarrior, or if you are able to back up all of the data on the external drive to another drive, reformat the external drive to defragment it.

and check that you have done this:
http://www.digidesign.com/compato/osx/panther/002rack/

Processor Performance & Power Mac G5

For optimal Pro Tools performance, you must set Processor Performance (located in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Options) to "Highest". Updating your Mac OS may reset this to the default setting: "Automatic". After updating your Mac OS, check to make sure this is set to "Highest".

Apple's Mac OS help documentation provides the following info on Energy Saver Processor settings:

The PowerPC G5 processor in your Power Mac G5 can run at various speeds. The default setting for this feature is "Automatic", which allows the system to run the processor at full speed when required, and at a lower speed during periods of light processing activity. Certain real-time applications, such as audio creation or gaming, may perform optimally when using the highest processor performance setting. You can change the processor performance setting in the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences.