Mac OS 9 Lives

Classic Mac OS Hardware => DAW - Audio & MIDI Hardware => Topic started by: Philgood on November 25, 2015, 02:00:30 PM

Title: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Philgood on November 25, 2015, 02:00:30 PM
The Quest: to get running my wannabe Protools TDM 5 Rig!

So i have here:
   
1.   G4 Dual 867MHz Mac
   1.5Gb ram
   2x Ata Harddrives (Master/Slave on Ata/100 bus)
   Nvidia4MX graphic card
   a little VGA monitor

2.   1x Mix Core card
   2x Mix Farm cards
   1x DSP Farm card

It got this pack recently and it was running though i didn't do any stress tests with it...
The first problem occured when the mac couldn't boot and i took of the two harddrives
to connect them to a USB-ATA adapter to connect them to my PC to check if there were in a
dying state.
I had Paragon's HFS+ driver demo installed but it just went out of the trial period so i even bought the package
just to see the files as without their program the harddrives under windows couldn't be seen.
It didn't work...neither under Windows XP nor Windows 7...they still showed as RAW under windows Disk Management.
So i connected them finally to my 10.9 Mavericks with the same USB-ATA adapter and put them back in the MDD after
their appeared to work normally.

Why i didn't do it that way in the first place ?
Well, i didn't want OSX to touch my OS9 partitions and guess what...I got the famous "Invalid Btree Header, 0, 0" error

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=2830.0

Finally it booted again until the other night when i connected a secondary monitor, a 22" Cinema Display i finally found cheap, what a giant beast!
All worked fine as i was exploring the display settings but the system froze when i was shutdowning.
I forced the shutdown and tried to boot again but got only a black screen (no signal) on the primary monitor. I disconnected the Cinema Display to
make sure it wasn't the problem.
Then i took out all the protools cards just to see if it will boot again and so it did...
Then i started adding them again one by one, but couldn't get it to boot even with only the Core card so i tried a PMU reset and
got to the point when it booted with the core card and i did a Digitest which it passed successfully.
I didn't succeed in adding all the 4 cards and being able to boot. I always get a black screen at some point and have to start over again.
I did try to reorder the positions of the farm cards of course.

So this morning i tried again and was sometimes successful after hitting shift at boot up to disable the extensions temporally.
I could get a successful Digitest of the core and 2x farm cards at one point but it went black again after adding the dsp farm.
I will leave out the Dsp farm card for now as i got said that it's now worth much because i won't be able to run much plugins on it.

So that leaves me with 1x Core and 2x Farm cards for now that i want to get running.
I finally downloaded Mactron's Restore&Rescue CD and wiped the system harddrive with a fresh 9.2.2 image.
After disabling the ATI extensions and moving manually the Multiprocessor Folder out of the extension folder and went again
trying to add the farm cards one by one but get the same black screen occasionally at boot...

So i think i could try the cards in my other MDD 1.25Ghz or switch the Radeon 9000 Pro graphic card to the Dual 867 only to
see if it's the card that's causing the problems.

Do you have some clues ?
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: devils_advisor on November 25, 2015, 02:32:41 PM
Damn what a disaster.  Did you test the mac itself? Ram and so on? Sometimes you get odd behavior just with a almost empty battery.
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: mrhappy on November 25, 2015, 08:45:49 PM
Maybe you could run some of the diagnostic stuff here on the site to see if something is flakey with the MDD/ memory/etc... Get that stabilized first then start with the PT stuff.
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Knezzen on November 26, 2015, 12:01:32 AM
I actually had alot of problems with the Radeon 9000 64mb (Apple card) in my MDD. Strange freezings, not booting, black screens.
Switched it for a GeForce2 32mb (I only use the machine as a DAW, so the lesser card makes no difference) and all problems went away.

This was close to two years ago now though, so I can't recall every detail. I had to remove the ATi extensions as well to make the system stable.
This was probably a driver issue with the Radeon, but I just wanted to make some music so I just switched cards instead of trying to get the Radeon running stable with the MIX cards.

Otherwise it sounds like you have some RAM trouble. Try removing all but one stick of RAM and see how far you get with that.
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Philgood on November 26, 2015, 12:55:47 PM
Damn what a disaster.  Did you test the mac itself? Ram and so on? Sometimes you get odd behavior just with a almost empty battery.

Yes. While i was booted to Mactron's CD i did an Techtool Pro system check. It didn't find any problems. That was without any protools card of course.

Tomorrow i'll try the Apple Boot CD.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=822.0

I actually had alot of problems with the Radeon 9000 64mb (Apple card) in my MDD. Strange freezings, not booting, black screens.
Switched it for a GeForce2 32mb (I only use the machine as a DAW, so the lesser card makes no difference) and all problems went away.

Geforce2 ?

I think i could try one i have around.

Quote
This was close to two years ago now though, so I can't recall every detail. I had to remove the ATi extensions as well to make the system stable.
This was probably a driver issue with the Radeon, but I just wanted to make some music so I just switched cards instead of trying to get the Radeon running stable with the MIX cards.

Otherwise it sounds like you have some RAM trouble. Try removing all but one stick of RAM and see how far you get with that.

I saw memtest on Mactron's CD. Will try that too.
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Philgood on November 26, 2015, 01:29:47 PM
Geforce2 ?

I think i could try one i have around.
.

I googled a bit...i have a Gainward Geforce2 Ti...seems that it can't work on mac even if you flash it...
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Knezzen on November 26, 2015, 02:30:42 PM
Geforce2 ?

I think i could try one i have around.
.

I googled a bit...i have a Gainward Geforce2 Ti...seems that it can't work on mac even if you flash it...

Mines an OEM Apple card i had on the shelf, so I can't help you there im afraid :(
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Philgood on November 27, 2015, 07:18:19 AM
Little Update:

1. I didn't find a specific Ram Test program on Mactron's CD. Seems i didn't look well.
2. I burned the Apple Hardware Test CD http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=822.0. Again using the Disk Utility under 10.5 on my powerbook but it wouldn't boot the Dual 867. I shows up pressing option when booting and i can see it in the startup Disk selection panel but i can't select it. It's showing that it's a 9.1 system folder...

3. I decided to try just straight booting with the core card and 2x farm cards inserted and it worked, i however changed something...i always disconnect the power cable and the monitor cable before inserting the cards. After inserting them i connect first the power cable of the mac and then the monitor cable. THIS time i did it the other way around and it worked !
It booted.

4. I then tried another Digitest and got an error on all three cards..."No TDM Clock connected..." i think this is due to not have connected any interface to the cards so i'm not worried about much at the moment.

...to be continued
Title: Re: Problems with my Protools Rig
Post by: Philgood on November 28, 2015, 08:26:51 AM
Well,it seems the problems went away.

Lesson learned!  -afro-

"The powercable comes last!!!"

Now i need to learn Protools. I was quite lost i have to admit.
Will see if i watch some tutorials from here around.