Before plugins, before drag & drop, there was blood, sweat & OS9.
Dial-up days, floppy saves, and infinite patience. Somehow, it made the magic sweeter.
Anyone else miss that chaos-turned-creation era? 💾

Aha - I was not aware of the 500mhz minimum requirement! That would certainly explain the issue, since I don't have the 500Mhz upgrade in my Pismo 400. Hard to imagine 100mhz would make that much of a difference, but doing a comparison on everymac, it seems that the cache bus speed is also higher on the 500: 200Mhz vs 160Mhz. So, those two factors may well be enough.

Guess I'll pause my pursuit of FW audio on the Pismo until I can find a speedier one!

Thanks for the FireWire_OSX_1_6_Build_1174.zip attachment!

• First, I ran the FireWire_OSX_1_6_Build_1174.dmg (attached here) on my Aluminum PowerBook G4 running OSX 10.4.11.
• When complete, I shut down and plugged in the audio interface (per the post-install prompt).
• Upon booting up the G4, the interface flashed its blue status light until the OS was fully loaded, upon which time, the light went solid blue. The FW Audiophile stayed solid blue, wile the FW 410 flashed each of its front panel lights in succession before resting at the solid blue status. At this point, each of the interfaces were successfully downgraded to build 1174.
• Next, on the Pismo, I installed the latest OS9 drivers for each interface. 1.0.2 for the FW Audiophile, and 1.0.4 for the FW 410.
• After installation, I shut down, plugged in the interface and booted up. The same flashing-light-to-solid-blue process occurred, after which each interface was fully recognized by the system. Successful OS9 downgrade was now completed successfully, with each device's control panel showing the correct version number and working as expected(ish).