Orange Amps Forum

My recording iMac's video card died. All of my files are accessible, but I needed it tonight to edit and bounce down my students' holiday concert from earlier today. Grr...

But, I fired up my ancient G4 Mac in OS 9.2.1 with ProTools 5.2 and it worked perfectly! Good grief... trying to remember how to maneuver through OS9 was a little taxing! ha ha ha!

Guess I need a new recording computer...

If we were neighbors I'd lend you my G5. They don't make them like they used to, these days their computers are pretty much soldered shut so if one component dies a whole bunch of components need to be replaced. Unless you're running thousands of samples at the same time I'd keep my eyes open for a 2010 Mac Pro 5.1, they're still beastly tools. I use one too but for photography, runs all the latest photography software perfectly as well as 4K video. Plus it's still easily expandable.

Bought mine from a composer who was running an insane amount of samples, so for his work it just wasn't cutting it anymore, but if you're recording a band you're solid...

I agree with you on that - they're really made so that you can't repair stuff and now the newest ones are worse - even memory and hard drives are hard-wired.

I have another iMac upstairs but it's not set up for recording. I may bring it downstairs and replace my recording computer but we'll see. I may go the separate Mac computer and monitor route in the future again....

I need to try hooking a monitor up to the current machine and just see if it can run an external monitor... doubtful but worth a shot.

I don't suppose there's and Apple Store in Boston, but I had about the same video problem a few years ago with an out of warranty MacBook. I was in luck as they fixed it due to a known Video board problem with that particular year of MacBook. If no outlet available, try calling Apple and they might be able to help or send you to someone who can.

Just a thought........


adkguy07

I'm just smiling

Have to love the G4s. Mine is still working and has the MOTU card in it, so I still use it for basic tracks even though it is 15 years old.

adkguy07 wrote:I don't suppose there's and Apple Store in Boston, but I had about the same video problem a few years ago with an out of warranty MacBook. I was in luck as they fixed it due to a known Video board problem with that particular year of MacBook. If no outlet available, try calling Apple and they might be able to help or send you to someone who can.

Just a thought........


adkguy07

There's even an Apple store in my town! But no luck on any kind of support for it...

Arg! That's terrible Billy. But glad the ole' G4 got the job done. I miss those older machines, and the older operating systems as well. Maybe not OS9 , but older versions of OSX.

We have an old G4 Mac Pro at our practice space running running Pro Tools and 10.3 and It still works wonderfully. At home, I'll be sticking with my 2012 MacBook Pro for a while. I'm not into the new ones, so I just dropped a SSD and max RAM into it.

-Nick