Pulsar2 on os9 with logic 6 - any tips to get it going?

[ubergrafik]

Hi - I am running a pulsar 2 on a mac G4 with lightpipe out and everything is grand as far as the pulsar side.

I can get a physical midi keyboard into the card, and run it using its own DSP and then through the physical out via analogue out or ADAT.

However, I am wanting to run logic 6 and cubase, and am having issues getting midi in/out of them and to/from the pulsar.

I tried reinstalling the SFP software for the card - and it now installs the ASIO driver, so far so good and everything seems to be in place as per the install guide.

Has anyone got Pulsar2 on os9 with logic 6 running?

[Bud Weiser]

Hi - I am running a pulsar 2 on a mac G4 with lightpipe out and everything is grand as far as the pulsar side.

I can get a physical midi keyboard into the card, and run it using its own DSP and then through the physical out via analogue out or ADAT.

However, I am wanting to run logic 6 and cubase, and am having issues getting midi in/out of them and to/from the pulsar.

I tried reinstalling the SFP software for the card - and it now installs the ASIO driver, so far so good and everything seems to be in place as per the install guide.

Has anyone got Pulsar2 on os9 with logic 6 running?

Hmm,- I like the idea since I have a Mac G4 Gigabyte Ethernet Dual G450 running Logic 6 w/ RME Hammerfall and http://alexhixon.com/projects/jamport/index.html Alex Hixton Jamport to connect a Miditimepiece 2.

I think I have a spare Scope DSP card left over to give it a try "soon" ( ).

What was the latest Scope version for Mac ?
Were STS samplers and VDAT included and working perfect ?
I´m usually on PC w/ Scope,- so,- does it need different keys or are Scope app and devices keys cross platform ?
What about device files .dev and .mdl ? Are they different for Mac or PC ?
Does Scope run well or at all on a Mac PPC dual processor machine,- or would that be a futile experiment wasting lifetime ?



Bud

[valis]

Since you're on a G4 I presume you're pre-OSX? In which case MIDI is reliant on 3rd party drivers if I recall...

[Bud Weiser]

Since you're on a G4 I presume you're pre-OSX? In which case MIDI is reliant on 3rd party drivers if I recall...

OSX 10.4.11 Tiger, Logic 6.4.3 (IIRC), RME Hammerfall 9632,- and the MOTU MIDItimepiece II is connected to the "jamport" card.
All works fine.

There´s dual boot w/ MacOS 9.22 installed on a 2nd drive, just to run Emagic Sounddiver 3.x.

IIRC, Emagic Logic Audio Platinum and Sounddiver installed their own MIDI for Unitor (2) and AMT interfaces and there was compatibility for MOTU MTP.
But I guess, once I have a iConnectivity Mio XL (rtpMIDI) connected to a ethernet switch, on Macs I can activate IAC driver to run all MIDI over LAN and it works w/ OSX Tiger for sure, possibly also w/ (latest) Mac OS 9.22 already.

AFAIK, OSX is able using both CPUs, OS 9.22 isn´t,- right ?

So, which was the latest usable stock SCOPE for Mac version able to run on such machine and what was included.
Did Scope run on OSX at all,- or is MacOS 9 the only way ?



Bud

[borg]

It was OS9 only. I had Scope 4.5 running on a G3. Not all G4 machines were able to host the cards iirc.
Since 4.5, not a lot has changed on the surface. I think the colour change was with 5, or was it 4.5, or 7..., maybe a few devices (the spectral balance thingy, new stock compressor and eq???), too many years ago to get chronology straight. Most, if not all, stock synths were available already at that time.
Anyway, 4.5 is the latest version to run on OS9.

OMS was the midi driver needed.
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/101 ... 2-3-8-oms-

It looks so ancient now, having used OS9 until 2011. Scope ran just fine on that machine, it was Ableton Live that started choking from version 4, when VST and midi were added. But it ran just fine as an external box connected through ADAT and midi. Samplers and VDAT were working, there was something with sample pools in Mod not working.

Astroman should be your man, he knows best here.

[valis]

You may be right, the G4 may have had the wrong voltage/keying. I don't recall fully, but it was hit & miss in that era on workstation boards too.

And thanks, OMS is what I was thinking of, it's been a few years since I had my Mac OS8/9 machines.

[Bud Weiser]

Hello,- PlanetZ up again,- very nice !

Thx for for the informative info according running SCOPE on Mac.
There are 2 beige G3 in stock here,- one of these running Logic 4.8 w/ the old serial port dongle and still a Emagic Audiowerk 8 inserted.
But the fastest is 333MHz only.

What were the system requirements for SCOPE 4.5 /Mac in the past ?
It´s interesting STS and VDAT would run flawlessly on such machine.
Or is the G3 blue/white the only one running SCOPE 4.5 / Mac well ?
I´d be interested in SCOPE "standalone" mode only,- no Logic etc., just only SCOPE 4.5.



Bud

Edit:

I´ve found the system requirements for Scope 4.5 MAC.
400MHz is minimum obviously,- so it´s not for my G3 beige 333MHz PPC.

[astroman]

I wouldn’t expect Scope to refuse install on a G3 due to low clockrate.
The slow IDE bus will be more significant and of course the 66Mhz bus clock and graphic card.

I just installed Scope 3.1c on my G4/800 Quicksilver and even that is kind of snail speed.
It‘s parallel to ProTools TDM, which I left shut off by not powering the Magma Extender.
(the PCI card is „invisible“ in that case, exactly 10 Masterverbs seems a good result in that context)
No further tests so far.

The fans of G4 Macs with side opening are quite loud in default setup... which really surprised me.
I added a standard PC power supply (iirc only 3 lines on the connector needed position change).
Apple (smart as usual ) uses a flipped mounting position so a standard PSU fan will blow against the side wall.
Re-flipping the PSU and a different top cover made the fan blow over the CPU with good results.
Long story short: powering the box can be annoying, in particular with the original „smart“ (see above) power button.
Ok, I only paid 20bucks for the machine, so let‘s not be picky...

[Bud Weiser]

Thx for chiming in astroman,- you´re the expert.

800 MHz and still snail speed doesn´t sound promising unfortunately.
So I think, it´s all not woth the fuss and even I´m always interested to keep machines alive and running instead producing electronic scrap.

thx again,-



Bud

[astroman]

Yes, same here... but my curiosity was triggered by VDAT, which I didn‘t expect at all on Mac
Tbh the Quicksilver G4 was highly regarded by myself... until I heard it live in my room. WTF.
It was a serious endeavor to silence the box with 3 Pro Tools cards inside, but I‘m happy with the result.

My 2Ghz P4 mobile for Scope7/SDK is (of course) way faster, though slow by todays standards like the MacMini M1.
The latter now has a Motu 828 USB, which finally terminated the Adat mess with the ID22.
(the Motu has wordclock input and syncs perfectly with the rest of the System)

[valis]

VDAT was stable in that era, where for other things (like multicore usage) Scope was stable later.

Remember OS9 is still using pre-emptive multitasking and so isn't subject to timing issues that OSX & WinXP had on older hardware (Pentium3/G3/etc).