[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hi Tankboy
My reccomendation is to go for the new type Seagate 11 series esata drives, they are very big (up to 1Tb, and quick and have a very large cache – all of which is what we want for video.

Ive put my drives in individual cases outside my G4 Mdd Fw800 to cut down heat buildup that was a problem in this model – I installed a sonnett 1.4 esata pci card and setup as a jbod array and have not had any problems in two years of intensive use.

I like to have the drives outside the box so I can keep an eye on the little blue light showing me the data rate thats happening on each drive. The drive cases are ICE “Sun Bright” (!)that hold one drive each, and its nice to see them twinkling away as a big render goes down 🙂 also, the clients are impressed…

I also run an external FW800 dual HDD array for the”system drive” in mirrored mode, with a spare secondary drive, that is, one primary drive that gets all the s/w loaded on it which it backs up to the secondary drive and every month or so I change to the spare secondary drive which then rewrites it to mirror the primary, so I always have a complete backup of all my documents and apps.

I was forced to these somewhat extreme measures after loosing my total system including UPS’s on two occasions, due to faulty power connections, caused by salt building up and arcing on the insultors on the transformers out in the roadway ( the Pacific Ocean is my neighbour over the road)
The spare secondary drive sits in an older G4 that I use for a print server and its damn handy to have.

I feel that the eSata system is more robust than Fw800.
I also reccomend turning off any firewire device before plugging it in. (Yes I’m Paranoid 🙂 and the owner of several Firewire Oxford Bridges that turned into Dogs when hotwired (i.e. went Woof)
HTH
Bruce

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hmm, not sure if I like this idea for edit systems untill I can be sure that the polling feature can be disabled.

As I understand it the transmitting device polls the reciever for correct licencing zones and suchlike codes and if it gets the “wrong answers” it disconnects the signal!

Nothing wrong with the idea of one plug / cable for everything though

cheers

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hi Cris
Yes this is a known problem with dual 1.4’s. What i have done with mine is a little extreme, but works well. I have removed all the drives from the tower and put them in external hdd cases. this removes the restrictions to the airflow inside, and cuts out the heat generated by the drives themselfs
This should be enough to sort it out.
Also make sure that the preforated intake grill ( inside, behind the four finger holes on the front) is absolutely free of dust and lint.
I also fitted two small fans here from a pc overclocked cooling system and took out the now empty hdd cage – you can leave in the back cage with one drive in it as this assists the air to go via the heatsink fins arround the processor.
The big fan inside normally runs resonably quiet but there is a thermal system which triggers the fan on flat out if the processor gets too hot – the trick is to make sure that the air can get in and out, so keep the airways free and the tower away from the floor.
Do Not open the side door as this will stuff it up – not fix it.
TMHO this was the reason Apple redesigned the G5’s with such a good cooling system for the subsequent models….
cheers
bruce

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hi Cris
Yes this is a known problem with dual 1.4’s. What i have done with mine is a little extreme, but works well. I have removed all the drives from the tower and put them in external hdd cases. this removes the restrictions to the airflow inside, and cuts out the heat generated by the drives themselfs
This should be enough to sort it out.
Also make sure that the preforated intake grill ( inside, behind the four finger holes on the front) is absolutely free of dust and lint.
I also fitted two small fans here from a pc overclocked cooling system and took out the now empty hdd cage – you can leave in the back cage with one drive in it as this assists the air to go via the heatsink fins arround the processor.
The big fan inside normally runs resonably quiet but there is a thermal system which triggers the fan on flat out if the processor gets too hot – the trick is to make sure that the air can get in and out, so keep the airways free and the tower away from the floor.
Do Not open the side door as this will stuff it up – not fix it.
IMHO this was the reason Apple redesigned the G5’s with such a good cooling system for the subsequent models….
cheers
bruce

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Also when you run the M100 test, click on “loop” and retire to bed. Next morning it should show 100 test passes if all is well, and believe me if it passes 100 tests, all is well.

I had a dual 500 on ver 7 and it ran quite fine, but the change to v8 seemed to bog it down somewhat and the change to a dual 1gig g4 sorted this out, you should pick one of these up off ebay (for example item number: 330008831602) for under $300

I have noticed that sometimes as the computers age, the heat transfer grease arround the proccesser hardens and I suspect causes intermittants. get it reseated and new silver heat grease applied.

All the best

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

I dont actually know. However what it was must be pretty big, because I heard the noise of the party way down here in Wellington New Zealand 🙂

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hi Matt
I know that Qt 7.01 on 10.3.9 and M100 8.2.3 worked ok for me. Also I have found in the past that you cannot easily go backwards with some installs, (particulary O/S installs and now it seems QT flavours as well!)

So maybe the solution is to update the O/S to 10.4.6 as M100 says this is ok.(then all your planets are in alignment 🙂 ……)

Anyone else?
cheers

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Yes there were a few “issues’ with 10 2 and everything seemed to come right after 10.3.6 on my system. The big issue IMHO is keeping the Quicktime version in step with the relevant O/S. Upgrade to Tiger and you should be sweet.

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Thats right Arthur, however 8.2.3 (free update from M100 site) on 10.3.9 with Qt 7 AND the first update to it seems ok – except that at the moment I cannot check it on m100 with high data rates, but it certanly was ok on my G4 dual 1.4 with all the above, using DV quality rates.
I also would not under any circumstance update with an unfinished project in the works.Which makes it quite hard to actually update! 🙂

Bruce Mc

[Bruce Mcpherson]

Hi Clayton
I know its safe on 8.2.2 on 10.3.9 and Qt 7.01. and I have seen Floh say its safe to go to 10.4, so, – is its free from 8.1 to 8.2 these days? BTW
10.3 .9 was a lot “nicer’ than the earlier versions and quicker responses . Dont do it if you dont do Qt 7 and load the new patch.
Cheers

Bruce Mc