(-6101) CPU Overload Error

[OddsAre]

what OS version are you using? How big is the hard drive, how full is it? Are you sure all of the plugins you have loaded are Intel or Universal versions? FW800 is used by a lot of people but not the first choice for most people. Any chance of you purchasing a PCI-express Firewire card? that would put you hard drive and MBox on separate firewire busses increasing performance.

[CujoAC]

Just a reminder that I have BOTH a Maxtor and a MyBook, it's not just the MyBook that Pro Tools is barring me from recording to.

[JrummerJ]

I am running LE 7.1.3 on a similar macbookpro, but with 2 GB RAM and M Box 2 Pro connected via firewire 400. My exe HD is attached to the firewire 800 port. I too am getting the "CPU overload/ increase H/W buffer size" message every time I try to record or playback, and I am not dealing with USB at all. I've tried adjusting the buffer size up and down, but the message just oscillates between telling me to increase the buffer size and telling me to decrease the buffer size. Help, I want to record!

There are known conflicts when running the interface at 400 and the HD at 800. Chain them and run both at fw400 or pick up one of the siig expresscards to add another port on a different bus.

J

[OddsAre]

it's just weird, I have never seen Pro Tools say, "Nope you can't use that drive" so I'm just not sure other than to say get a new qualified hard drive.

As a matter of fact if I were you I would buy a PCI-express SATA card and an external SATA-II enclosure with a 2 bay hot swappable drive and use SATA drives. One drive for backup and another for operating. They are dirt cheap and like 7 times faster than Firewire. Backups from SATA drive to SATA drive are lightening fast. I have a 2 bay external SATA enclosure for my Mac Pro and have been running 2- 500's in it for backup and 2- 80GB SATA drives inside the Mac Pro for Operating drives. Works perfectly and the added bandwidth seems to have dropped errors during high track count/high plugin count sessions. I only have one Firewire 80GB drive in rotation right now. All the others I own (2.5 terabytes worth) I use as cold storage at the moment. I love that I can start a new project and order a brand new Seagate 80GB SATA drive for $48.97, charge the band $100 and give them the drive in the box it came with when I hand them the disc of their mixes. Any studio they might want to go to in the future to revisit the tracks will most likely have a G5 tower or Mac Pro that they can just slide it right into the case in a matter of seconds. So there is an initial investment involved, but it has now paid off for me since I am paying $50 for drives and not $110.

[DigiTechSupt]

I am running LE 7.1.3 on a similar macbookpro, but with 2 GB RAM and M Box 2 Pro connected via firewire 400. My exe HD is attached to the firewire 800 port. I too am getting the "CPU overload/ increase H/W buffer size" message every time I try to record or playback, and I am not dealing with USB at all. I've tried adjusting the buffer size up and down, but the message just oscillates between telling me to increase the buffer size and telling me to decrease the buffer size. Help, I want to record!

You cannot use a FW800 drive with an MBox 2 Pro - doing so is very likely the cause of your problems.

FireWire 800 (or FireWire 400) Hard Drives

FireWire 800 (or FireWire 400) drives with the Oxford 912 or 924 chipset interface have been qualified for record and playback with the following systems on Mac OS X 10.4:
Pro Tools|HD and Pro Tools|HD Accel Systems (with Pro Tools 6.9.2 or higher)
Pro Tools LE Systems (with Pro Tools LE 6.9.2 or higher) with the following exception:
FireWire 800 drives are not supported for record and playback with Mbox 2 Pro systems

From this page:

Firewire Drive Requirements for Mac OS

[DigiTechSupt]

Just a reminder that I have BOTH a Maxtor and a MyBook, it's not just the MyBook that Pro Tools is barring me from recording to.

Another question - how are these drives formatted? Unix? Mac OS Extended? FAT32?

[JrummerJ]

Just a reminder that I have BOTH a Maxtor and a MyBook, it's not just the MyBook that Pro Tools is barring me from recording to.

Have you formatted both drives for HFS+ (Mac file system + journaling)? Not to underestimate you or anything, just checking the obvious, and I came across this in another thread when I googled...

Gone in to workspace and enabled both drives as recording volumes?

I remember some people having issues when they used certain characters in naming their drives.

Just some ideas.

J

[CujoAC]

Hey all,

Thanks for all the of the replies and suggestions. As I said I won't have my setup in front of me, so I'll respond later with the detailed error message that I'm getting.

In terms of the formatting the MyBook was setup originally as a Mac drive, the Maxtor wasn't, so I'll look into that.

In terms of purchasing more equipment....out of the question, I already have two massive externals that are nowhere near full and I already dropped the money on the Mbox 2. Quite frankly I'm tired of pouring money into this as it's just a hobby for me .

Thanks!

[klezmeraniac]

That clears things up a bit. Thanks for the info- I wish I had known that earlier. It seems odd that the M Box 2 Pro specifically does not work with FW800 HDs. Should be the faster, the better, right? Since my MacBook Pro has only one FW400 port, what is my best option?

[JrummerJ]

Does your hard drive have a fw400 port? If so, your choices are either to chain them or to pick up the siig expresscard to add a second fw port. I have the M-Audio fw410 interface and I have had good luck by using the siig card for the hard drive and the onboard port for the interface.

If it does not have a fw 400 port, then you need to pick up a fw400 to 800 cable, which will work at 400 speed.

J