mBox 2 Pro Woes

[bdbender]

So I have an HD rig and recently purchased an mBox 2 Pro additionally for a home rig so that I can never fully escape my work lol...

HOWEVER--> Since day 1 this Mb2P has been giving me hell. Dropouts, audio outputs going dark during use of a myriad of apps (PT, iTunes, safari/firefox etc etc). -6085 errors on a dual quad 3.0 gHz with 3 gigs of RAM....

At first I was running the thing strictly off of buss power and the addition of the PSU helped for a while but know its back to its usual shenanigans of being mostly a waste of money.

I've tried all the usual steps and nothing has helped to resolve my issue. Additionally, its so frequent and so unprompted by anything I am doing (seemingly) that's its making me wonder if I got some lemony Hardware? I mean, it will behave fine for 4 hours of hard vocal tuning with melo and then I come back from a smoke whilst its been sitting idle and -6085 errors...Reboot, power cycle, rinse and repeat.

Here the dope on my system:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 3 GB **(2 1GB sticks and 2 512MB sticks installed on pairs on the 1st card)
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP21.007F.B06

PT Version 7.4.2 cs2

OSX 10.5.4

I've checked and doublechecked the compato and everything seems to be on the up and up...

Help?!?? Any advice would be VERY much appreciated

Cheers

--bender

[Slim Shady]

Memory: 3 GB **(2 1GB sticks and 2 512MB sticks installed on pairs on the 1st card)

That's the part that worries me. Are you saying one RAM card has 1x1GB on it and the other has 1x1GB and 2x515mb on it? If so, that's not installed correctly, you need to split up those 2x512mb so there's one on each RAM card. See the Mac Pro's manual for info on how to install RAM correctly if confused. You might also try removing any non-Apple RAM entirely just as a test, maybe whatever RAM you upgraded with is faulty, bad RAM is often the culprit when you're getting random, hard-to-reproduce-regularly problems.

And if that's not it... what kind of hard drive(s) are you using? Any other firewire devices in play on this rig?

[bdbender]

Sorry if I was unclear, all four sticks are on the same card, installed in pairs (1gb #1, 1Gb #2, 512 #1, 512 #2) as was my understanding that's how it should be done... Fill up the 1st ram card then move onto the 2nd.

I have 2 gtech 500gb-ers and one lacie 1TB raid drive. Have tried running sessions on all 3 on both 400 and 800 and the same result, totally unpredictable performance.

The only other peripherals that are connected at all are my iPhone (occasionally) and a MPD-16, the connection and or disconnection of which doesn;t seem to make a difference.

Thanks for the help man...I'm banging my head against the wall on this one...

[bdbender]

OH and the MPD is USB anyways, just fig'd it was meritorious of mention as it could be something so asinine as the cardinal direction the computer is facing at this point...lol....

[Slim Shady]

Sorry if I was unclear, all four sticks are on the same card, installed in pairs (1gb #1, 1Gb #2, 512 #1, 512 #2) as was my understanding that's how it should be done... Fill up the 1st ram card then move onto the 2nd.

Yeah, that's totally wrong. They need to be split identically across both cards. You should 1.5GB on each card in your situation. Pull out that little white book that came with your Mac Pro, it explains it. I would imagine this is probably also causing issues with Apps other than PT, if you run any.

I have 2 gtech 500gb-ers and one lacie 1TB raid drive. Have tried running sessions on all 3 on both 400 and 800 and the same result, totally unpredictable performance.

MBox 2 Pro's generally hate FW800 devices (although more an issue on laptops), but get rid of any of those as a test at some point. RAID is definitely completely unsupported and known to cause issues, ditch that sucker off the rig all together when PT is open.

Basically you've got a few comapto and setup no-no's, so hopefully after remedying them things will get better for you.

[bdbender]

ahh OK! I totally misread that little white book then lol

I'll try that 1st thing. Ya the raid drive is use as a backup drive but I will start unmounting as a procedural then.

I'll try this stuff and get back....

And I owe you a beer

[bdbender]

ok so after re-arranging the RAM, both 1gb sticks are being seen by the computer as 512 sticks; system profiler is seeing 3 gb of RAM as 2gb. The configuration is 1gb #1 in cardslot #1 on Card A, 1gb #2 in cardslot #1 on Card B, 512 #1 in cardslot #2 on card A, 512 #2 in cardslot #2 on card B

Also, same error. PT was working just fine, playback through whatever other program (OS, itunes, firefox whatever). I split the house for a meeting and come back to exactly what was left and the mBox ceased to output audio. A power cycle of the mBox, PT reboot, and everything is fine again. In this instance, I was playing back through the OS player and the file was an mp3 on the system disk.

[flommer]

Sorry but Slim is wrong... (well right idea, wrong specifics.. )

Riser A should have the 2 x 1Gb sticks and Riser B should have the 2 x 512 sticks

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment....9&d=1187657852

[flommer]

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...4&itemid=23114

Plus Digi specifically says FW800 is not supported with Mbox2 Pro