Why would a PCI card not work in a similar Mac?

[Weather]

Why would an Audio Interface PCI card work in one Mac G4, but not in a newer, similar computer?

My Sonorus STUDI/O audio interface card has been working great in my G4 450 (AGP), through various MacOS versions, now in OS 9.2.2, using LOGIC recording software.

Putting the card in a Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25 Ghz (MDD Mirror Drive Door), the card is recognized by Apple System Profiler, but Logic abruptly quits without explanation as soon as it starts up and tries to acknowledge and integrate the card.

Throwing away Logic’s Preferences will let me successfully start up LOGIC, and choosing the basic MacAV as the audio engine will work just fine (so it’s not the application itself that’s broken). But if I specify the STUDI/O, as soon as I relaunch LOGIC to activate that choice, the program just quits without explanation again.

Same system (OS 9.2.2) as in the G4 450 (except that the Mirror Drive’s OS 9 was a slightly newer, machine-specific build).
No special drivers needed, as LOGIC supports the card directly.
I tried all available PCI slots, with no difference.

So why would a PCI card suddenly not work at all in a newer, but comparable Mac? Any ideas?

Thanks,
Peter

[Weather]

Additional bit: The STUDI/O card is not supported in OS X, and Sonorus has closed its doors. So there's no help forthcoming from that direction. But in OS 9, everything should be good to go. Could a somewhat newer, faster computer like the Dual 1.25 really have that much of a detrimental impact on a PCI card?

[Paddy]

Weather, while I can't address the problems with that specific card, I do know from experience that sometimes PCI cards that are *supposed* to work simply don't, for whatever reason. I have a video card that is *supposed* to work in my old G4 - there are even "fixes" for it that are supposed to make it work when experiencing similar problems to the ones I was having, but the system just freezes regularly enough to be an absolute pain, if you try to use it. I finally gave up. Not the message you wanted to hear, no doubt!

It could be the slight differences in the version of OS 9 that the MDD is running or it could be some little hardware difference that is causing the problem.

It's interesting to note that as far back as the G4 Sawtooth, Sonorus note that they were having a higher than normal number of "configuration problems" with the G4 - it's possible that while they may have gotten them worked out for that machine, later G4 issues were never addressed because the company closed its doors. Given that there is absolutely NO support anywhere on the site for OS X or Windows XP, it's been almost 10 years since that happened. And the final release of 9.2.2 (December 2001) also occurred after they shut their doors, it would appear. Depending on which MDD 1.25 you have, it came out in mid 2002 or 2003, which is clearly long after Sonorus shut down. So any issues with that hardware would never have been addressed.

[gunug]

It's possible someone in a "different" users group might have asked this question and have been answered.  I always search for information like this in user groups with Google or Yahoo for example I searched for "Sonorus STUDI/O card under OS X" and got these:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12389911

http://www.logic-users-group.com/forums/sh...ead.php?p=21995

Which tells you that other people are looking. . .other places to look are "general unix" and "linux" resources if this is one of those make or break sort of things for you Weather! So unless you're "Freewheel17" or "Pands" then maybe someone else has an answer for this!  There are also some musicians of my acquaintance who use MAC's (with MIDI and Firewire type interfaces) and maybe someone else here (other TS members) have someone to go to with this!

[Paddy]

Um, John, I believe Weather posted both of those questions at the other forums, using different user names. The question was posted a couple of times in the Apple forums, the first time with the exact wording used here. And the post at the Logic users group is also the same as here. I saw the Apple forum post and assumed he was trying to cast as wide a net as possible. However, it would appear that current Mac users of these cards may be few and far between these days.

[gunug]

Paddy, I kind of thought that it was possible that some of these were Weather; but some I saw were not phrased the same way and appeared to be different situations.  This is what I'm saying.. . .that the process is valid and might yield an answer if a person pokes and prods at things enough.  I've found answers by asking "slightly" different questions and extrapolating!

[Weather]

Hey Paddy and gunug,

Thanks for your thoughts on my quandary. And yes, those other posts in different forums were by me, too. (Thanks for those links, gunug! You never know, it could've been something to shed extra light.) It seems as if the upshot of it all is: my "smartly" upgrading to a "new-est" computer of the same type as my tested-and-proven G4 probably wasn't smart enough. I may have to incur yet more expenses to move this thing forward.

In any case, thanks for the dialog!

[gunug]

I wonder just what, is actually causing the problem here.  I have taken a video card out of one Powermac G4 (400MHz or 450MHz) and have put it into one that was 750MHz or so and that has worked.  I can't remember what bus those were (AGP or PCI) but they worked.  The problem I had was that I had to put another system on it (9.2.2 and then take it up to 10.2 or so).  This worked! This could be a matter of the firmware version or something. of that sort!  Maybe if you started with the right system and upgraded it then this could work.  If you had a spare hard drive you could test this proposition and not lose anything! Don't know about the drivers for this sound card; but someone has surely tried to do what I'm talking about here!  

[Weather]

Your line of thinking was certainly an interesting trouble-shooting angle! I just tried starting up my old G4 450 from the MDD-ified, super-updated OS 9.2.2, via Firewire, and this worked, including using LOGIC (the audio software) with the STUDI/O card. No problem. Which means it's not the software, nor the MDD-specific new Extension versions of the "special" OS 9.2.2. As long as I'm using the old hardware, everything is fine. So at least it seems clear that the problem is hardware related. The audio card works inside the old computer. However it appears to be incompatible inside the newer MDD Dual 1.25. Maybe something to do with the much faster CPU, the busses, or the way PCI slots are addressed.

Well, that's what I get for upgrading my computer! ;-)
Everything's been moved over to the new (well, NEW for ME, anyway...) computer, in the hopes of running everything from this one machine, using OS X and having the option to still boot from Classic as well, on the last, fastest Mac that still allows that. But things being the way they are, I now have to make room for two computers, complete with two monitors and two keyboards/mice. At least until I can drum up a whole new audio card, as well. Which is not really in the cards right now (as it were...).

Thanks again for all you guys's brainstorming assistance!