Another MOJO Question

[Anonymous]

Just to add on a cert. dealer. I got mine from Promax, (powerbook g4, 1gig ram, 17″, 200 gig ext hd, w/ dv clam shell and fw card,) sent to me all loaded, and tested, no fuss no mussall I have to do know to add the MOJO

[Andrew J. bricker]

You can use Mojo and an external firewire drive on a laptop. Just use a firewire PC card. I do it all the time with my G4 Powerbook. Attach the Mojo to your laptop’s firewire port, and your external drive to the card.. LaCie makes a good one with firewire 400 & 800 for about 80 bucks.

[Oakmozart]

The first thing about your system that makes me nervous is the VIA chipset on your mobo. Every time I’ve tried to build an Avid system (or make one work) around a VIA chipset, I’ve never had any luck. I ALWAYS go with an Intel chipset when building/buying a new system for video editing…ESPECIALLY for Avid. This is based on past experience (nightmares), so take that for what you will.

The rest of your system looks fine. The only problem is, using firewire storage isn’t going to fly if you hook Mojo to your system. You’re going to need to go with internal SATA storage, or external SCSI storage (expensive!). Park your firewire drives on the shelf for now or toss them on Ebay and use the proceeds to buy SATA/SCSI drives. CAVEAT: if you buy a certified system, you’ll be able to use your firewire drives, because you’ll have multiple bus segments.

It’s always a toss-up as to whether or not Mojo will work on your system. Getting XPro software to run on a homebuilt-system is usually a piece of cake, for the most part. Getting Mojo to run on it, however, is usually far more difficult. My suggestion: buy a certified system. If that’s out of the question (and it’s understandable if it is), then buy a Mojo and see if you can get it running. If you run into troubles, posting on these forums for help can often times get you tracking down the issues that plague your operation. If for some reason you just can’t get Mojo running, you can always throw it on Ebay and get most (if not all) of your investment back. Ebay is a great place to buy used Mojo’s too. If I were you, I’d ensure that you’re getting the “Cujo” version (determined by the letters “CLK” on the back, which allow Mojo and Digi 002 to be synced if you’re using Xpress Studio) and not one of the older “Rev” series (Rev D, Rev H, etc.). I’ve seen used Mojos, “lightly used” go for around a grand. That’s a $700 discount over buying one new and that’s a pretty decent chunk of change in savings.

On a closing note: SCSI drives are criminally expensive. You will pay hundreds of dollars for them and find yourself with nominal storage. If you buy Avid-brand SCSI drives, you will pay over $1000 for a 146 gb drive. That’s ONE DRIVE!! If you buy Seagate, Western Digital, etc., you will pay much less, but will still pay out the wazoo. Consider SATA drives, especially the 10,000 RPM drives.

Gotta get back to work, will answer more questions if you have them!

Take care.