-6097 and -6086 a lot ... on G5/Panther!

[FrankEEE]

So far - after two days of working on a first project I can say it is nice, powerful ... but somewhat not very reliable communicating with the 002R device.

I am working on a project (so far) involving:
16 Audio Tracks
13 moderate Plugins altogether

Performed on a PM G5/1.6GHz 1.25GB Ram, External Maxtor 20GB Disk (in FW400 housing) as Audio Data Disk.

I keep getting the error message:
"Lost communication with 002. Please try increasing H/W Buffer Size or removing plug-ins and make sure you have a valid clock source (-6097)"
and
"The operating system held off interrupts for too long. If this occurs frequently increase buffer size (-6086)"
quite a lot - even when there is nothing played back.
The performance monitor indicated half CPU usage and kinda nothing on the others - yet the errors above occur?!?

The H/W Buffer is set top max 1024. But I really do not want to decrease the number of plugins used. That was one of the reasons to move from an old G4/ to a G5. And 13 plugins even my G4 would have done under a Cubase VST (in OS9).

Is there any other 'adjustible variable' within the Pro Tools environment to get this going properly?

[FrankEEE]

FOLLOW UP:

I actually moved the project now to the internal HD, disconnected the FW Drive, relinked and can confirm:
it has nothing to do with my external HD.

My next try will be the firewire port the 002R is plugged into - will try the front one in the machine instead.

BTW: I 'disabled' about half my plugins used by now. Still get the errors with -6097 becoming my favourite since the last 6 years.
I am actually having trouble to properly bounce the lot and sometimes even work at all since it occurs sporadically whilst I am 'touchin' no things.

I think I really need serious help!