[David Telling]

Gerret…

I can answer this from experience. Don’t bother with USB 1…It will work, but it is SOOOOOO SLOOOWWWW!! By my calculation it took about 40 times longer – consistent with the 12Mbps vs 480 Mbps speeds. It just isn’t practical unless you have a long downtime or want to transfer overnight. I couldn’t believe how long it was taking me to transfer just a few cards worth of storage from the P2 Store to my Titanium laptop, and I had to wait to get back to the studio to transfer via our desktop G5 with USB 2. You could try a USB 2 PCMIA card, but the one I bought last minute in a crunch may not have been Mac compatible and didn’t let the P2 Store show up on the desktop (and that is with the P2 Software installed correctly)! Make sure to get a Mac compatible version if you try this.
Hope that helps.

Continuing with the thread, any more experiences/recommendations to USE, or NOT TO USE the P2 Store would be really appreciated.

THANKS!
David

[David Telling]

Sorry, I forgot to thank Tim and Shane, as well

[David Telling]

Tony and Bob…
Thanks so much for your input. At least that helps clear up my concerns on the restart although I still seem to have no luck with mounting from an initial start up. Last night I tried the set up on a second G5 Dual 2gb Power PC and again the drives don’t appear on start up – however long I wait.
When I first installed the Tempo X4P on my system it was not plug and play. My system did not recognize it and it did not show up in the system profiler. As there was no software or literature in the package and it was past Sonnet Support times on a Friday evening – I downloaded the latest driver from the Sonnet site (version 2.0.4b9) but that didn’t work either. On the Monday tech support told me I should have used version 2.03, which did make it show up.
Yes, the Kona 2 Card is in slot 4 – Tempo X4P in slot 3. I am getting the types of speeds Bob mentions, although I did have to remove a Mark of the Unicorn PCI 424 Audio Card from slot 2 because it drastically cut down on the speed of the SATA system (which is a bit of a pain).
It’s not vital, but what would happen if I put the Tempo X4P in slot 4 and have the Kona 2 and MOTU Audio card share the 2 and 3 slots – would that cause complications with the Kona’s performance, too?
I’ve checked the cables numerous times, but will keep an even closer eye on them, or buy new ones. I actually purchased a new X4p which is coming today (just in case that could be the cause).

Kevin…
Interesting you should make your comments. My most recent problems have included erratic freezing within a specific Final Cut Project. I’d make a move in the timeline or try and open a clip, and up would come the rainbow wheel indefinately!! Final Cut would not force quit, and a hard, button restart would be required. Then it got worse. Every time I tried to save that project from within FCP to the RAID in the Fusion 500P, the system would completely hang!!! -Desperate – basically ending my ability to continue working!!!!
Then, even more confusing… Thinking I might have a corrupted project file, I went to the Autosave files I store on my internal system drives. Even though these files can copy correctly between internal drives (or some externally connected Firewire Drives I tested) – every time I tried to copy one of those Autosave files to the RAID in the Fusion 500P it would again freeze (saying 0kb copied of 1.9Mb copied – and just not progressing). Did change the location of the cable in the X4P card, and this time the file would copy – BUT Final Cut would freeze when I tried to open the file!!! AAGHHH!! Other files seem to copy and play without a problem – mind boggling and gut wrenching! That is where I was up to on Thursday night, pulling my hair out!! Since then I have had some more sleep, feel much better about having you guys to communicate with and will be trying to sort this all out this weekend. Just trying to get a system and I can truly have some confidence in (which was the reason for buying these enclosures in the first place).

Thanks for all your help, guys. Any additional comments welcomed and I will keep you updated.

David

[David Telling]

Thanks Tony…

Would you mind telling me – when you start or restart your system, do the drive(s) in the Fusion 500P enclosure appear on the desktop at the same time as your internal system drive(s) – or does it take a while longer for the drives in the enclosure to show up on the desktop?

I’ve noticed that with my set up, all the green lights appear when I power up the Fusion 500P (but no blue light activity) – Then after starting up the computer, it takes approx. 45 seconds before the blue light for the drive in the bottom bay flashes briefly followed by the next bay up approx 15 seconds later, then the next 15 seconds later…and so on. This means that when my drives do show up, it’s a lot later than any other drives inside or attached to the system. Having been used to SCSI and Firewire RAIDS that have always appeared on the desktop simultaneously with the internal drives, I thought that the late appearance of my Fusion 500P drives may be cause fo concern? What’s your thought?

Thanks so much.

[David Telling]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your assistance.

[David Telling]

Thanks gentlemen. I appreciate your help.

[David Telling]

Thanks so much guys… I will do some experimentation with importing/relinking, so I know I have it down.
Sincerely appreciate your help.

[David Telling]

Thanks for the information. It helps me make decisions about an upcoming workflow.

[David Telling]

Chris…

Thank you so much for the assistance.

Needing a PCI-X solution, and reading about the hardware acceleration for DVXProHD on the AJA boards, I managed to purchase an “open-box, never used” (we’ll see) AJA Kona 2 card for $1275 on EBAY.
Again, this is more than I need right now, but the price seemed pretty good and it does give me some additional flexibility.

Truly appreciate the help.

[David Telling]

Thanks Chris, I appreciate your help.

Would you mind telling me the specific name (model number?) of your card with HDSDI and component out. Are you using it on a PCI-X or PCI Express G5?
As I understand it, the DeckLink HD Extreme is for the new PCI Express equipped Macs. Mine is PCI-X.