HELP! w/ G4 purchase

[kellog]

I'm ready to get a G4 dual 1 ghz and DP3. My dilemma is what hard drive to record to. At MOTU they said the internal ide drive would afford me over 80 trax(!) with eq and compressor plugs going. I've heard never to record to same drive as OS is on. So maybe a 2nd ide drive? What about an ultra wide scsi and scsi drive? Is firewire NOT going to give me over 30 or 40 trax? What's the throughput and seek time of the internal drive.
Lot's of ?'s I know. But I have 16 trax (VS-1680) and stable midi now so the $ output really needs to be worth it to me. Any advice appreciated. Kelly

[michael eads]

Kelly if you are going to get a G4 for recording get from a place that will configure the system for you. Sweetwater is great for that . They will set the whole system up for you so you basically just plug it in and go. Even though MOTU says you can record on the system drive it is not advisable. You will get better performance from a seperate drive that you record audio to only. Firewire drives work great for this. I configure these systems all day with Sweetwater. Let me know if you have further questions


Michael Eads

[kellog]

Michael, thanks. Got yer reply at the forum. So what drive setup would be best if I want, say, 50 trax with common plugins going and some reverb available too? I know there are variables like edits etc... Kelly

[michaelhoddy]

Were I you, I'd get a second internal ATA drive and see how you do. It's cheap, it'll work better than you might expect, and you can always add the SCSI or FireWire drive later on. I have a loaded G4-dual 800 running DP and a lot of intensive plug-ins (Waves and Bomb factory), and I'm using an ATA drive. But I also have SCSI.

[BlackOctopus]

Hello,

A RAM question. My iMac came with only 128MB of RAM. From what i can see i need more RAM as my iMac has been crashing.

Does anyone know if there is a specific kind of RAM that is preferrable?
I need at least 256MB right?

[Justin]

The iMac uses a specific type of ram similar to that used in the Mac laptops.
We carry it in 128, 256, and 512 mb configurations. It is user installable in the onboard expansion slot.

If you need some, call your Sweetwater sales engineer and they can help you.
If you don't have one, call 1.800.222.4700 and we'll get you set up with someone who can help you.

[cmchamp]

Kellog:
Don't mean to direct you elswhere, but the G4's are easy to upgrade yourself. I purchase my HD's and ATA interfaces from ClubMac. Wish I had one of those new machines.
I have my G4-400 AGP set up as follows.
OEM 20G with OS9.2.2
30G Maxtor on internal ATA bus with OSX 10.2.1
Sonnet Tempo ATA66 card with: 2 60G Maxtor and 2 30G Maxtor drives.

I use Digital Performer 3.1 (just updated from 3.02) and assign tracks equally amongst the 4 drives attached to the ATA66 card.

Had I to do it over again, I'd use either an ATA133 card (wasn't available when I purchased) or an ATA133 RAID card. That keeps the buffer issues in check.