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PPC Nubus sound system

Unknown_K

Well-known member
I have a 7100/66 with a G3/250 1MB, 128MB RAM, the PDS video card adapter and a 9GB UWSCSI HD (currently with a 68 to 50 pin adapter).

Since I have a spare jackhammer and a spare Audiomedia 2 Nubus card (and 2 empty Nubus slots in the machine) I was thinking of making a small sound editing workstation.

Any idea of what software I should use? How well with this setup do with the Audmiomedia 2 card? Was thinking of finding some protools software and maybe Deck II.

Also I have a problem with the drivers on the jackhammer saying this card cannot work in the system call tech support. Any idea what this is all about (think I had the same issue when I put it into my 81/110 but I hear thats a conflict with the Media 100 cards).

 

Bolle

Well-known member
I´ve got the same setup.

7100/80 AM2, Thunder IV graphics, PDS video

but no g3 upgrade. I´m using protools 3.4 and soundedit. setup was simple. just putting the AM2 drivers into system folder, installing protools and you´re done... only problem is that protools does not load DAE automatically and crashes if you don´t load it manually before you load protools. (same with sound edit) The aM2 is a cool card. it sounds great.

have a jackhammer laying around but it doesn´t work at all...

EDIT: got all the software i needed from retromac

 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
I purchased the 7100/66 with the intent of putting the G3 in my 81/110 with my Media 100 cards, but the pds passthrough needs to be in the middle Nubus slot and the Media 100 cards have jumpers between them so its a no go. So an audio workstation was my 2nd option. Was only $20 for the machine.

I have soundedit from my mediavision nubus soundcard (with manual), will check that one out.

Bolle: whats wrong with your jackhammer? Did you pop a fuse or lose the onboard terminators?

 

Bolle

Well-known member
dunno... terminators are in place... it´s not recogniced by the control panel. one of the thingys at L1/L2 came apart but i soldered them back on. where´s the fuse located? should it be at F1 in the upper left corner? (does "F" stand for fuse?) if yes what fuse do i need?

 

TylerEss

Well-known member
I can get 24 tracks and 12+ realtime filters on an 8100/80 with a JackHammer, Sonnet G3 (NewerTech is a *lot* better for this application), AudioMedia II, and a 10k drive, running Deck 2.6.1 under MacOS 7.6.1.

You should be able to get about 10 or 12 tracks on it really really easy, and after that you can tweak it for more and more. :)

When you're going for the absolute most, make sure you're using a 40MHz bus machine. If you're not pushing for super performance, you don't need to worry about your bus speed.

Also, if you're using an 8100/80, make sure to grab the upgraded ROM SIMM from a 6100/66, 8100/100, or 8100/110. The first version has some bugs that cause decreased NuBus performance and poor stability. (The newer SIMM comes in the 7100/80 as well, but if you have one of those you should *use* it, not part it, because of the 40MHz bus)

I wrote quite a bit about this in a LEM article. It's here: http://www.lowendmac.com/sable/06/0508.html

ProTools 3.4 is free, but will only do 4 tracks on the AMII. You can use ProTools in PowerMix mode for more tracks, but then the bugginess of the AudioMedia II SoundManager drivers will make you crazy.

Deck II 2.6.1 supports the AMII natively and will do as many tracks on it as you CPU and disk can handle. Deck II 3.0 and higher will only support it if you can find the AMII ASIO driver, which I searched for for about a year. :-(

Cubase will support the AMII, but only with the same, unobtainable ASIO driver.

I think Studio Vision Pro supports the AMII, and is available freely online, but I don't remember where just now... I've got it on my SE/30, though.

SonicWORX PowerBundle has tons of really cool realtime effects, and works with AMII though the SoundManager drivers. It's free, as well. It's not multitrack software, though.

 

Maccess

Well-known member
AFAIK, one of the symptoms of the Nubus PPC ROM bug is that you can't use more than one bus master card in the system, unlike the 840AV and most Quadra Nubus Macs.

Both the FWB SCSI card and the AMII are bus master cards. I'm not sure someone correct me on this.

 

TylerEss

Well-known member
I *think* that's the case.

When I was using that system lightly, it didn't matter which ROM I used. Once I started pushing its limits with 20+ tracks, it would crash every few minutes of playback if the older ROM was installed.

With the new ROM installed it looped playback of a 24 track project overnight and was still going in the morning.

I don't really *know* why it was like that, but that's what it was. :)

 

Maccess

Well-known member
The buggy ROM doesn't support the BlockMove16 command for transferring large blocks of data among NuBus Cards. The best implementation of that was in the 840AV.

 
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