I had problems too to get SystemLink working. Turned out that the Digital in/out on my Tascam US428 was enough “processed” to mess with the control data so that the connection never got established. Don’t remember any more details but it eventually worked using another interface.

Covering half of the CPU core seems to be enough after all. I don't recommend anyone to do this, but it does work just fine

That's somewhat surprising! I'm glad it can work like that.

I confirm GaryN's observations.. in fact I had made them too (see at the beginning of the conversation of this post). visibly seen after placing and observing thermal paste on copper heatsink. Half CPU not covered.

@GaryN I see, so you meant horizontal alignment, and I assumed you meant vertical. Yeah, now that is a problem. I suspect even Sonnet didn't realize the copper heatsinks were a thing early enough in time or, if they were aware, they assumed the alignment and all would be the same for all the heatsinks. In short, what most likely happened is that Sonnet got Apple'd!

I keep thinking there must be something we could do about this, but I guess that would be ugly, nasty and convoluted...

Y'know, it might be worth a look to see if you can perhaps find a 3rd party copper heatsink that will fit and also not have this issue. Some people tried that, and I don't know if they succeeded. I know I tried years ago, then gave up and went for the Apple one (as I wasn't affected by the MDX problem since I never got one). Or, probably better, it also seems like liquid-cooling might be your best friend to address that very issue you pointed out.

Then again, a dual 7447 @1.83GHz is more than good enough for just about anything.

@DieHard I honestly think the pre-Quad-core liquid-cooled G5s were engineered precisely to lead people into accepting the upcoming switch to the generic IBM-PC-compatible Intel-based architecture. Even the MDD's power supply wasn't on the bottom. I don't think their engineers were incapable of seeing the issue with that design from the get-go.

I wonder if the power supply of a G5 could be externalized... But that'd be a different topic.

Hello everybody.
Im setting up two G4s to try and run VST system link betweeen them. (Using an old Korg 1212io in the one and a Echo Layla on the other to link by SPDIF).

Can anyone reccomend a KVM switcher? is/ was there a good one to look out for so that I dont have to use a pc one with lots of turnarounds...

Many thanks!