[John Davidson]

Thanks Steve. Got my card from Small Tree, the Sonnet Echo Express (it’s WAY bigger than it looks), a mac-mini server, and harvested an Areca 1882x w/ ProAvio 8ms / 3Tb drives on RAID5 from one of our suites. Loaded in the ST driver and the Areca Thunderbolt update and amazingly everything is seen and the raid works (600MB/s up/down according to the AJA Speed Test).

Just wanted to report that this stuff is working. I’ll probably be bugging you guys tomorrow.

Thanks for your help guys!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Turns out I was just seriously impatient. I tried it again Friday and it stuck at 34 minutes (again). The system logs last note was that it was checking volume. It occurred to me that we have a lot of volumes, so I left the office with it still running overnight. Yesterday, voila, there’s my new kitty waiting on me. AJA and Blackmagic cards are working great.

It’s my fault for being impatient. Apple could maybe rework the algorithm for time left though. It’s waaaaay off.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Airplay will only work with new macs (2011 or higher) with the Intel quick play feature in it. I think that’s the name of it anyways.

My 2010 mac pro with a 5770 in it won’t work. Sadness.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Thanks guys. Steve, just bought the Sonnet Express Pro and a Small Tree PE2G6I. Once they arrive I’ll put in a mac mini server and see what happens. Does the manual show how to configure correctly with OS X Server / Mountain Lion?

[John Davidson]

Not yet. We did it the official App Store way. Just another update -I reset PRam on Edit 1, repaired permissions, and voila, it rebooted back into Lion.
We will not be installing anything on this mac until we find out what caused the issue.

The second mac has everything inside it, but the user accounts are just gone. Normally this would be the end of the world, but there are no active projects on this mac. I’ve had issues with is losing sync on audio for years, so a clean install is probably a great idea. Aside form that, we have dedicated internal time machine backups on each mac pro, so the world isn’t ending. Kind of a flub of a launch though.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Updated 2 imacs. Worked great. 2 Macbook airs, No problems. Older 2008 Macbook Pro, like a charm. 2 Mac Pros – not working. The first mac pro got stuck for two hours at ’34 minutes left’ with no change. The second got stuck for 2 hours at 1 minute left. Apple support communities suggesting forceing a reboot and they would continue where left off. Edit 2 deleted all user accounts and started up like a new computer, edit 1 is still stuck at 34 minutes after three forced boots. Oddly, edit 1 still sees the applications, just not the users.

If you’re on a mac pro, wait.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

When you post an ad for FCPX, seeing who references the correct program in their response email is a pretty good way to screen the applicant. An FCPX person will specifically mention it in their response. A legacy person will say they’re experts at Final Cut Pro, which means you’d have to train them and deal with Crying Editor Syndrome (CES).

CES is a real disease. Symptoms include inability to learn new things, difficulty reading words written on a wall, and obsessive visits to this forum.

[John Davidson]

Putting it on two iMacs and a macbook pro 2008 now. Will tell myself to wait, but we’ll probably be installing it on the big macs today as well. Doh!

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

I did one back in June on LA craigslist, but for a PA to do keyword tagging. Some interesting responses were hurled at me.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[John Davidson]

Probably not. It’s not like these companies just have $99 laying around to test an OS that has been available to developers for 6 months. Although somebody on the FCPX forum said that Blackmagic’s drivers have been available for ML for a week now. Show offs.

For anyone interested, Sonnet stated to me that the R380 is compatible with their Echo but “Why draw attention to a card that can’t be obtained anymore?” they said. Basically anything that is ‘thunderbolt aware’ is compatible. Magma’s compatibility page is less promising.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.