Extension loading order on OS8/OS9

[themagichoof]

I have a MOTU 324 and a Sonnet G3 upgrade CPU running OS8.6 on a 9600. The MOTU driver loads first in line but I need it to load AFTER the Sonnet extension or else the whole system freezes.

I've put nothing but spaces in the Sonnet extension to get it to load first, and I also changed the name of the MOTU driver with Zs and ~ signs, plus moved it into the System folder, and absolutely nothing is working. It loads first no matter what. Conflict Catcher can't reorder the MOTU driver either, it's not in the Reorderable list. So the problem is the MOTU driver. The Sonnet extension can be reordered as per usual.

I was told that perhaps the programmers of the MOTU driver put a non-printable character in the resource fork but I'm not too savvy with that. I briefly looked over the MOTU driver in ResEdit and didn't see anything out of the ordinary or a place to input a non-printable character on the back end to get it to load first.

Is there any way that I could force the MOTU driver to load a bit later, or do the opposite and force the Sonnet extension to load first? Simple file renaming isn't going to work. I haven't tracked down exactly what's making the MOTU driver load first yet so maybe someone here will know what to try.

[James Steele]

Ummm... if this were 1994 instead of 2014, I could be of more help. Maybe someone else might have an idea.

[themagichoof]

It's 2014? Man, that was a long nap!

[James Steele]

It's 2014? Man, that was a long nap!

Hehehe... I'm trying to bump this and get you some help. There are some guys here who keep legacy systems for particular purposes and might be able to help you.

[themagichoof]

I'm hoping I won't have to get another CPU. I've read some reports that the Newer Technology CPUs run fine with a 324 card/driver so I may actually have to downgrade by 200mhz and plus pay more for the slower one. Don't wanna do that, but I may have to.

This MOTU driver is loading 1st no matter what. I can't find an area in a Hex editor or ResEdit where it's making this thing load so early.

[Shooshie]

That's been over 10 years, but I remember Conflict Catcher being useful for changing the order that Extensions load. Why won't it work for this?

What I remember doing was creating Locations that more or less changed the whole computer. It seems like I had extension sets that I could turn on or off. Can you still do that? When I loaded the MOTU drivers, I loaded almost nothing else. That was probably the #1 reason why I NEVER had crashes in DP back then.

Shooshie

[themagichoof]

The extensions/drivers that don't show up under the Reorderable Startup Files section can't be reordered as far as I know. I tried dragging the MOTU driver which was listed under "Other Extensions" but it won't budge. Maybe there's another way to do this in Conflict Catcher?

I've never fooled with Locations and I'm unsure if that's something in Conflict Catcher or the OS itself. Maybe I'll dig around and see if I can come up with another method.

[mikehalloran]

Put a tilde or dash (I don't remember which) in front of the one you want to load first. You can put a tilde and a dash, IIRC but just spaces will not affect anything.

Conflict Catcher was one popular utility for the use. There was another but I no longer remember.

This is 20 year old nonsense that I am remembering. I do have an old G4 that has OS 9.22 and 10.4.11 in case I need to convert really old files. In fact, I'm using it now. I did something stupid while testing and Time Machine is restoring my iMac.

[themagichoof]

No amount of renaming wizardry has changed anything. This MOTU driver has some voodoo in it for sure. I even renamed the MOTU driver to ~~~~~~~, stored it in a folder outside the Extensions folder, created an Alias for the ~~~~~~~ file, then dropped that into the Extensions folder and it STILL loads first. Even with the Sonnet extension named with nothing but spaces!

It was suggested that there may be a nonprintable character in a resource fork in the MOTU driver which causes it to load absolutely first, but since I don't know what I'm doing, I couldn't find anything in a Hex editor or ResEdit.

[mikehalloran]

No, there is a way. They load in alphabetical order. That much I remember. Characters and numbers beginning the name do make a difference.

If my iMac was up I could test it on this machine by rebooting into OS 9.

[themagichoof]

You're correct, it does make a difference, but that's not the only thing controlling whether or not an extension is loaded first or last. You need a ResEdit hack to control at least one other thing and the MOTU driver falls into that category. After two and a half full days of hell, I successfully got the Sonnet driver to load before the MOTU driver.

Unfortunately that wasn't the problem. I'm still crashing

The real problem is that the MOTU driver and the Sonnet driver just don't like each other. Currently I've got a NewerTech 300/200/1M CPU on the way so hopefully that will clear it up. I read of others using these CPUs with a 324 no problem.

In the meantime, just for fun I'm going to try some further hacks to see if I can get this working.

[mikehalloran]

Dang, I recently sent a G3 cpu upgrade kit to electronics recycling because no one wanted it. I would have given it to you rather than throw it away.

[themagichoof]

Which one? I bought a Newer Technology G3 300/200/1M. I'm downgrading by 200mhz, but I read some good things about the Newer Tech CPUs for both older MOTU and Digidesign gear.

If I get this new CPU and install it and the drivers, and I start freezing again, I'm going to vomit

[themagichoof]

http://aurora.cloudfactory.org/pipermai ... 08406.html

I then proceeded to install the PCI-324 Sound
Manager extension so I can use the cool converters of the 2408mkII w/my
Sound Manager apps like Toast. This is where it really bugs me. Not that I
really need to use the PCI-324 Sound Manager extension but it doesn't seem
to like the Sonnet Crescendo extension and vice versa. The system freezes
each time at start up.

Looks like I'm not the only one. There's another guy on the Digidesign forum however - http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=39241 - where he says,

This is set up on an Apple PPC 9600 with a Newer Technologies G3 processor upgrade running af 400mHz. I'm running OS 8.6 with 224 megs of ram. I'm using MOTU Audio system version 2.1.2, and PCI-324 Driver 1.5. I've gone through PT LE 5.0 and 5.0.1. I just upgraded to PT LE 5.1.

and it was a working system. I hope the 300mhz CPU will do the same.

[themagichoof]

I'm still freezing with this NewerTech CPU installed. It at least gets past the startup screen, but later on it freezes.

I'm going to kill myself now.