I managed to work out the reason why, it wasn't so straight forward
....The Sandisk USB pen drive is not recognized by Disk Utility in OS 9.2 on the G3 Pismo therefore cannot be initialized/formatted by the machine, It will show the contents & allow you to transfer files but that is it, I had to use the G5 dual 2.3 (my PPC desktop which only runs 10.5.
to erase & format the USB drive as Mac OS Extended, When i plugged this back into the Pismo a warning came up with a prompt to initialize/format the USB drive, which i did, I then unmounted teh USB drive, stuck it into the G5 & copied the System Folder from the drag & drop 9.2, voila the icons & correct definitions of the files appeared, I then plugged the USB drive back into the Pismo & proceeded to drop the newer versions of the extensions from the drag & drop into the extensions folder, There are a few which you cannot drop into the extensions (as they are in use) but all you have to do is drop them into the extensions (disabled) folder, then open extensions manager & un-tick the old & tick the new.
After i did this i created another duplicate set of extensions strictly for audio/DAW use, once I had done this & restarted i tried the M-Audio again, still clicks & pops & distortion with high buffer, low buffer & just about every combination of settings in the Audio System setup of Cubase 5.1 32, 16bit 24bit, 32 bit, 44.1 all the way up to 96, I tried Recycle & a standalone plug in, All playing back with the same (random) distortion, The M-Audio drivers where the last ones available for OS 9 & i tried the drivers from the original install disc & also the drivers from the M-Audio site with no joy, Making sure the unit was unplugged until i had installed the drivers & shut down the Pismo, I tried 2 different firewire cables, I tried both FW ports on the M-audio & both on the Pismo with absolutely no change in reliability
Just to make sure it was not a faulty Audio PSU board in the Pismo, I checked audio coming via sound manager, no distortion or glitches, I then installed the OS 10.5.8 drivers from the M-Audio website onto my G5 desktop, shut it down & connected the M-Audio to the FW socket, restarted & checked the audio running Cubase 4, no clicks pops or crackle , so the M-Audio was not the issue.
I then remembered 11/12 years previously when i had just purchased a shiny new G4 Ti 500mhz powerbook & a Motu 828 FW to run with Cubase (SX?) to replace an old beige (quadra?) i was running with an Audiowerks PCI card, It was a nightmare getting stable ASIO drivers & the reason why i chose MOTU was due to the drivers being the most stable for OS 9, The M-Audio drivers are obviously really buggy & they probably gave up rectifying any issues knowing OSX & core audio where round the corner, hence the lack of 'performance' with the Pismo 400mhz, The CPU in Cubase with Trilogy running & a couple of bars of a bassline looping was 20% & the hard disk was zero (using the USB drive as the audio folder) when i had the M-audio connected so the glitches & distortion must be something to do with the M-Audio communicating with cubase via the ASIO drivers, At least it wasn't as bad as using apple sound manager which wouldn't even allow me to play a note (the CPU performance meter in Cubase did not register any % but the red warning light was constantly glowing.
Even though the Pismo is powerful enough to run Cubase & some discontinued plug-ins (Pluggo etc) getting an interface with stable OS9 ASIO drivers is a whole other can of worms, I thought this cheap M-Audio would do the job & intended to hook it up to my Apogee via SPDIF clocked from the Apogee & record the audio into Cubase 7 running on my Intel retina quad core i7 which uses USB3 for the Apogee, but no cigar.
I will try to pick up a MOTU device to see if that is more reliable & if it's not then I'll probably just use the Pismo for editing & transfering MIDI files to a couple of synths & rack units which only have OS9 software, I have a Midiman USB midi interface thats pretty reliable with the Pismo.
I guess that's why everybody jumped for joy when OSX appeared & core audio, I have never had an issue with reliability on any core audio FW interfaces & i have owned a few of those (Metric Halo, Apogee, RME)
ASIO is a nightmare, When i was searching google for clues of what could be the problem i came across a lot of PC forums with people still having issues with ASIO to this day.
Thanks again for the help & pointers guys, I'm going to have to leave the OS9 world for a bit to get back to some productivity & workflow in the modern world
Peace
Sparra
