iMedia 100

[part12studios]

just ordered 8 of those adapters..  done..  now we wait.. heh

[devils_advisor]

i had to order a handful as well. since pretty much all my old recording cards work with sdi or component and composite in bnc form.


here is what i used for os9 in avid and media 100 aswell as pinnacle


https://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-ProLine-AG-DS850P-S-VHS-Recorder-Editor/352600428293?hash=item52189f8f05:g:DqgAAOSwxXJcbx17
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-AG-DS850P-S-VHS-Recorder-Editor/173877162469?hash=item287be2f1e5:g:IvUAAOSwJRFcuLPv




similar to this one, have a look at the connections. These are the pro line decks with rs-422 rs232 for remote control frame accurate.

[part12studios]

yea when I bought this unit it came with x2 16gb external SCSI2 hard drives.  They work, but loud..  I wondered if getting a second internal SSD might be sufficient.  I know it's not ideal but between the storage, compactness and overall quiet, it would be fine. 

That VHS deck looks sick though.  My analog senses and interest in making videos that are deliberately old looking makes me want to go this route.  I have a basic VHS / DVD combo that can record but it's nothing like this unit with frame by frame advancing and such.  However I'm still just getting my OS9 music studio optimized right now so video is taking a backseat.  The big thing was making sure it works fully and it does..   I still have to figure out a few things with Media 100 like how to do cross fades but I'll come back to it when it's time to really make videos. 

[FdB]

Status update?

[part12studios]

Well I got Media 100 working on my Sawtooth machine running Tiger.  I couldn't figure out how to do transitions, but i could do basic editing.. arranging clips and such..   

What I need to do is ask the M100 folks if they'd be willing to help me generate a s/n for an older version of M100 to work with the hardware so I can have the card be in my quicksilver machine..   the s/n I have that matches the hardware i have is OSX only.. 

Question though, how hard is it actually to dual boot with OS9 and tiger?  This is an alternative approach, but I'm not sure how involved it is, or if it means I have to blow out my entire mac drive to do it

I haven't purchased any nicer VHS player either.  Been busy with music more than video so it's overall been on hold, but not forgotten.   I don't have room to keep the G4 Sawtooth and Quicksilver machines up and running so really I'd like to have everything in one box..   

The more I think about it, the more I probably should explore dual booting..

or what about this?

If I got my hands on another SSD drive and put it in my IDE chain..  would this be easier / less destructive?  I would imagine taking the 2nd SSD drive and simply installing tiger from scratch on that drive keeping the main SSD untouched..  then selecting to boot from one or the other.  Is that possible?

[DieHard]

The very least amount of issues would be to dedicate 1 drive per OS, and in OS X turn spotlight off regarding the OS9 Drive, search the forum because we have discussed the "Dual Boot" thing Ad nauseam

[part12studios]

ok yea i can do that.  definitely understood other places have addressed this, but great to know that having dual drives (separate) is actually the best way and my personal preference too as i really didn't want to have to format / tinker with boot stuff any more than necessary. 

what's the spotlight off thing.  why would that matter and is this something likely addressed in said threads as well in terms of how too do it? 

[mrhappy]

  why would that matter and is this something likely addressed in said threads as well in terms of how too do it?

In X... open system Preferences... select 'Spotlight'.... click 'privacy' tab... drag OS 9 drive/s into the list. That will stop that nosey spotlight from snooping around in your OS 9 drives where it doesn't belong!

[part12studios]

fantastic!     Now to find a thread on how to dual boot..  hasn't been forthcoming..  "dual boot" and a few other variations hasn't yielded anything specific. 

[part12studios]

Hey guys a quick update (especially for diehard if he still has any of this hardware) on this.  I joined the Media 100 group on facebook and there are people in there who I believe can and are willing to generate new s/n based on hardware.  they have the software/means to get that.  the s/n is on each card so you just take that number and provide it and they can get you a new number. 

I had a S/N so I didn't need that BUT when i got the QS it only came with OSX version of media 100..  but my invoice with the computer had an OS9 s/n on it too..  someone had a link i could download and install on my (now OS9) quicksilver and it works great.

The folks on that group on FB are fairly active and posting stuff, more modern questions / discussions of course, but they seem to be a lot of guys who have a long history with the hardware/software and seem to be genuinely cool to help get these old suckers working again. 

[IIO]

i am always using the same drive - but differernt partitions - and i am always using an extra copy of OS9 as classic enviroment. and spotlight is off for all drives anway, as well as journalling.

however, when you use different drives, you can always be sure that the drive is not the case when some kind of problem appears, so it is the most safe path of all.

[jepler]

I see there were posts in this thread a few months ago so I thought I'd respond here rather than post a new topic. To make a long story short, I edited on a Media 100 system in 1998 and loved it and always want to own my own system. Due to Covid-19, I have extra time on my hands and got a G4 MDD going that was in my garage. Thought it might be fun to see if I could get a Media 100 system running on it, so I purchased a P6000 PCI card, ICE card and the original IDE hard drive from a guy on eBay who pulled it from a "working" G4 system used by a news broadcast company. He also sent me the serial number for the Media100i OS X and OS 9 versions that were on the hard drive. When I boot into my own HD I see the volumes on the old HD with the Media 100 systems.

In theory, should I be able to get this to run on my machine? Or do I need an additional hardware dongle or something with the key? I installed everything and it hangs when I try to boot to the old drive (with 10.2.6). Don't know if it's due to a conflict of some sort or something else. Disk Warrior fixed a bad volume wrapper on the drive. Not sure I want to invest too much more time troubleshooting if it's a lost cause to begin with.

[part12studios]

sounds like you have everything you need for it to work.  i've managed to even (after a bit of unrelated tribulation) to dual boot Leopard / OS9 on my Quicksilver and installed 7.x on OS9 and 8.x on OSX

So it sounds right.  Tell me this.  do you have this trouble when the P6000 card is not installed?  make sure you remove all other cards..  another lesson i learned when doing various rebuilding..   see if the issue happens if you boot without it.  It might also be worth trying something newer than 10.2.6 unless you have other older software that needs it.  I'd suggest Tiger as it's pretty easy to find and being a bit more "mature" as an OSX option. 

Leopard was a pain in the butt, but after some wrasselin' with it i got it to behave.

So yea first just make sure the drive boots without hardware to see if it's the card or something else.. then next step might be to do a clean install asi t soundsl ike the 10.2 you have might be old and who knows what ghosts might be in it still..   

[jepler]

Thanks for the reply. That's good to know that it *should* work with everything I have. I will try pulling the cards to see if that 10.2.6 volume boots.

The guy who sold it to me said he would include the original hard drive, but I think he must have included a cloned copy because it's only 30GB and has four partitions on it; a 10.2.6 volume with Media100i that is ~7GB, an OS9 partition with Media100xr that is 7GB, and two "storage partitions" that are each 7 GB. I can't imagine this was the original drive with two 7 GB "storage" volumes. My version of MDD is FW800 and doesn't boot OS9, unfortunately, or I'd run the xr version. Also read it doesn't work in Classic mode due to the card drivers not loading or something.

Wondering if I can copy over all the Media100i files on the 10.2.6 volume to my existing Tiger volume to get the card drivers, etc.? There is an install log on the 10.2.6 volume that shows all the files that were installed many moons ago and their locations.

Also wondering if this version of Media100i will have problems with a "newer" version of OS X (10.4.x). Maybe that's why they never upgraded the OS from Jaguar? I've seen a few posts in forums about problems people had when they upgraded back in the day, especially with versions of QT, that broke their version of Media100 on OS X. Lots of variables to work with! :-)

[part12studios]

yea sounds like you're on the right path.  I haven't worked deeply yet with M100 software yet.  I know the basics under OSX.  have done less with the OS9 version.  So not sure about things like quicktime in application.   However, it felt like it should all work nicely and that was with Leopard..  see how far you get with 10.2 but the good news is that there are images for ALL of the OSX versions out there and you may be better off just starting clean. 

i got the basics down like doing basic cross fades and such with m100, but i really want to find out more about effects options and such as i'm really trying to see what i can do making my videos feel dated..  not just use old tools to make modern looking stuff..   hoping also maybe early after effects i have (forget which version) might be an option to explore.. 

I have a vhs camcorder i've been capturing footage with for a few weeks now on various outings with the family.. but i'll be digitizing this footage with the P6000/breakout box and try to produce music videos with it.  would love to figure out things like alpha channels and importing 3d renderings from Lightwave 5 into it..  all that jazz..  titling.. 

mind you my real dream would be to have a video toaster setup but i'm not holding my breath for that..   but yea this demo offers a lot of what i'd like to achieve..  and while i know that's 1991.. so hardware from 1999 is going to probably be too new to get those older effects..  i'm still hoping i can at least flirt with it..  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9alSsQLc8&t

isn't it funny though to watch videos on youtube and be like "but it really did look better live on a CRT".. there is a warmth that they had.. in spite of the low resolution.. the 60hz / interlace did something to the graphics..   same with an Amiga demo.. if you watch a video on youtube of the animation.. it loses something in translation..  it's not always about the pixels.   

You sound seasoned so maybe you know this already, but my understanding is that the MDD with FW800 can run OS9 but it take a special version of OS9 or some patch effectively making your FW800 work like w FW400 speed (i think that was the only drawback) but I haven't done this first hand. 

this was a music video made with the video toaster heavily relying on lightwave, but the blending of video / 3d was really cool..  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mH8PaWbi1E

[jepler]

Are there images for installs of Media 100i? That's what I'd like to do, is find a clean install of Media100i and use the software key I got as part of the package I bought (if that's possible). I've done a few cursory Internet searches and came up empty. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places. I even went back in time on the Media 100 website and found and old ftp address where they had legacy versions posted but it wasn't archived, unfortunately.

I did know about that patch you can use to get OS 9 working on a MD FW 800, but didn't want to lose the throughput of the firewire 800. If I can get Media100 to run under OS X, that will be fine for now.

Mostly, this little project is for nostalgic purposes. I cut my teeth on a Media 100 system and to this day I remember liking it more than FCP and Premiere I used during the 2000s. I have FCP 5 installed on my MDD and have been editing old footage of family events and the time it takes to render things is ridiculous. Editing on a 9600 using Media 100 was so much better.

I use FCP currently for work on an up-to-date Macbook Pro and it flies, but there's something comforting about the thought of of going back and experiencing how things were. I guess it's similar to people who still like to tinker and drive old vintage cars.

[part12studios]

yea i'm not aware of any images like that.  i don't think it's going to come to that anyway.  just make sure the s/n is for THAT card as you probably know, the s/n for these for software were custom to the card present, not just any card with any license.  There is an Media 100 group on facebook I'm on with pretty often.  Check it out.  These are pros mostly using the current generation software, but many of them go way back and know the old school stuff too. 

Sounds like we'll wait and see, but yea first things first be sure the system loads without the card and rule out any issues there, then roll on to adding the P6000 and hopefully it still checks out.  I have the 7 and 8 software in a zip if you need to do a fresh install I can share as well.   if you do opt to go with a clean wipe/install.  You just need to provide the s/n for that card. 

I was looking at that same ebay listing you likely bought with the extra card.  I'm kinda hoping to get my hands on the 2nd card as well just to know this baby is maxed out with that bridge card.  I'm still sketchy on what the extra card does.  I was left with the impression that it added cpu muscle but really it was muscle for older pre G series CPUs.. where G3s, G4s and G5s basically brought enough muscle to make those cards not useful?   Not sure. 

I was thinking they might help offer more real time effects / transitions for previewing. 

[jepler]

I'm not sure if that ICE card will do much for Media100. I saw something that it might help with rendering of some M100 special add on effects, but it is more for After Effects rendering and some 3D programs, I think.

It's a monster card, though. Could hardly fit it into the case. Sure would be nice if Mac OS could take advantage of all that extra horsepower. The RAM on that G4 is maxed out at 2GB which is nothing compared to today's speeds.

I requested to join that FB, waiting on approval. I might take you up on that zipped version of 8. Based on what you're saying, I guess a fresh install will work since I have the serial number tied to the cards and don't need a physical dongle key.

[jepler]

Well, that was frustrating. Pulled both cards and booted to the 10.2.6 volume without any problems. Decided to put in just the P6000 card to see if that is the one providing problems, and booted right up again to 10.2.6 without any problems. Yay! Figured I was in the clear! I launched Media 100i (v. 8.1) and all was well. So, like a dummy I started looking at some of the other stuff on the hard drive and found the Media100i installer file, so I thought, hey, why not just do a clean install on my Tiger volume? Rebooted and installed on Tiger, looked good (didn't ask for a system key during install which I wondered about) and said the computer needed to do a restart to finish. Voila, rebooted to a kernel panic. Removed the card, rebooted, same thing. Kernel panic. Won't boot the 10.2.6 drive either, even without any of the cards. So, I don't know what's going on. I was able to boot to a utility CD. Pulled all the hard drives, shut everything down, and stewed for the rest of the night. I have a different hard drive I'm going to install later today with Panther just to see if it will boot. Wondering if the P6000 card kicked off something that fried some of my RAM. It made a weird cranking noise after rebooting after the install and when I removed the card it was HOT, like really hot.

[part12studios]

man yea you went  through it in a short amount of time..  i was kinda like that with my attempts to dual boot with two separate ssds, and then other junk like bad ram.. so yea just keep on trouble shooting.  maybe the old ram was going bad anyway.. could just be age..  fortunately you can find replacement ram for that era stuff pretty cheap.. and if you have 2gb you have multiple sticks to test with till you rule out the bad ones.

Fortunately it seems that OSX install DVDs do a (crappy) memory check in that it will just crash when installing and not tell you why, but basically if it crashes, it's ram most likely..  i fought with this for awhile before realizing that OS9 was forgiving but it turned out not one, but two of my three sticks (quicksilver has 3 ram slots) were defective but i replaced them both for $20.. and have 1.5gb (max).. 

Keep at it.  You'll have it live before you know it.   Also for a modest investment, consider getting a smaller SSD drive and an IDE to SATA adapter for like $6 (there are nicer ones if you need multiple drives, but if one is enough (it should be) you can 1. eliminate some noise 2. save on PSU strain compared to spinners 3. be much more reliable and newer than 15+ year old hard drives.