Hi all,

I'm trying to restore a xpress 2.2 avid on a 9600 with mac OS 8. One external drive, a 74 gig, HFS formatted, connected to the atto pci express SCSI card, had the following problem. If I open it, it shows me the media files folder. If I open that one it tries to open but keeps scanning/counting in the end locking up the system.. I checked the folder (apple + I)and it has 3950 files in it. I scanned the drive with Norton 4.0 and it found only minor problems.

Now avid can't save the database files on this drive. So what I did is copy the folder to another 36 gig HFS formatted drive over night. That other drive was "new" and empty. That copy went fine. But next day the same problem on the new drive.

Now I found that Os 8.1 has HFS+ support and is actually the preferred OS for these avids. After the update opening the drive works fine. The whole system feels much more reliable. But avid still can't save to the drive.

I have trashed the database files. Avid successfully can rebuild them and in the media tool I can see all the media on the new drive. But when I close avid it gives me an error. OMFIHPDOMIAN error -36. I checked and this is an I/O error. So avid still can't save the database file. I checked the new drive with Norton 4.0,... no errors. I did some manual copies and do not get I/O errors so I do not suspect the SCSI bus.

I'm getting myself also diskwarrior 2.1 and I'm thinking of doing a fresh install of "OS 8.1 US" as the current OS is French. Second I remember that there was an issue with Norton 4.0 and HFS volumes. It had to do something with Norton trying to change HFS into HFS+ but I'm not sure.

Does anybody out there have any suggestions?

Partition the drive in two, or better four pieces. And keep the viruses out of your MediaEngine :)

Hi,

jveekeres:

But when I close avid it gives me an error. OMFIHPDOMIAN error -36. I checked and this is an I/O error.

See if Disk Warrior gives you a similar error.  I had an ABVB system with one of the drives throwing up -36 errors in Disk Warrior, and we never got that drive to work properly.  In this case, if the error is showing up on multiple drives, I think you're on the right track suspecting a SCSI problem.  Make sure all your cables are plugged in tight before deciding the bus itself is bad.

good luck,
Carl

costisn:

And keep the viruses out of your MediaEngine

And how will I do that WITHOUT installing norton on the media engine?.

Thx for your advice. Partitioning the drive might indeed be a good idea.

thx carl, I found diskwarrior and will give it a go. I'll let you know what it will report.

Norton 4.0 was never supported with OS 8.1, especially with stripped drives.  And Mac -36 errors are always SCSI
related.  If you can temporarily do so, move the contents of the suspect drive to another,then use Storex and perform
a write/read test on the drive.  This will wipe the contents of the drive.  Once done then you can repartition using ADU2/
Diskwarrior was supported by Avid to perform and fix balky drives,

HTH 

less than 4000 objects on a drive should not be a problem, however, you might not have enough resources allocated to
rebuild the MDBs.

A PMAC 9600 would have a total of 384mb of ram installed, if installed per the release notes.  Check under the apple pulldown menu to see total memory and freespace available.  Limit the open applications to just Media Composer and see if you can allocate more memory to Avid.  Disk Cache needs to be at 96k in the memory control panel.  

A good way of freeing up memory with OS 8 is to check extensions.  The OS will install extensions for a number of printers and monitors.  To disable these create a new  folder in the systems folder called disabled extensions and move the unneeded extensions in to the disabled folder.

Thx Mvegas,

This 9600 has 1x 4gig system drive, 4x external 36gig drives, 1x 74gig external drive and 1 internal stripe set, 2x 36 gig. This stripe set has more then 5000 media files on it and works fine. The 74gig started giving me the problems. The copy to one of the 36 gig drives did no solve it.

I will check the disk cache. I'm not behind the machine now but remember it to have 278mb of memory. I think I also might have some extra memory for this machine somewhere. Anyway, I will check how much memory is allocated to avid and increase if possible. I have already disabled all unneeded extensions.

I hope to have some time this week to use diskwarrior 2.1 on it and see what it has to report.

Jeroen, forget about disk warrrior, doctor, molester etc... We did not have these tools back in the day. Just call us to arrange a visit and i ll come to fix it. I will let you post about it , too

wauw.... I'll be passing by in a few minutes....  but you were not in office

Amazing but true....I found it.

The problem was memory interleaving. Not all memory banks were identical in the 2 banks A and B. If file count goes above approx. 3100 in a single media drive and memory interleaving is off the system crashes on the HP_OMFI timeout.

Nowhere did I find this limitation in the documents.

Now the machine does the interleaving correct, the whole system feels more stable.

Now rebuild the the disks after all the testing, put the machine back together.... and maybe it will do some more editing... the old slow reliable dinosaur.

Hey that is great news.  One interesting quirk is that the 9600 ram interleaving was counter-intutitive.
the largest chips were found in the top slots then working backward from there.  The file/drive ratio issues are ram related.
In OS 8, your disk cache should be no more than 96k.  Hold the option key down before you open your project.  This will tell Avid to launch without bins being opened, then you can only open the bins you need at the time.  

Happy Editing  

If you can find it, there was a great little app called nPower Control written by Daystar.  This little app would display a snapshot of your installed ram as a pict file on your desktop.  nPower Control was compatible with OS 7.x and 8.x.
You'll crash your Mac if you try running it with OS 9 or X 

http://archives.bengrosser.com/avid/1997-11/msg00353.htm

The above link discusses Ram related issues and nPower control

The Avid L(2) forum.... I should have become a member years ago...

Oh and Avid... the document, that would describe the ram issues is still mentioned online in the knowledgebase  but the pdf is missing?

http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=235685&Hilite=xpress+2+macintosh