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Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 5:37 am
by thenightwatch

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 7:18 am
by mikehalloran
I know that, last year, they were testing 8 and 12 Core processors from Intel.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 8:55 am
by HCMarkus
Watching.
Waiting.
Working using my G5 Quad( which still runs great, just don't try to run too many VIs at once).
Wanting SB Xeon.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 9:34 am
by mikehalloran
HCMarkus wrote:Watching.
Waiting.
Working using my G5 Quad( which still runs great, just don't try to run too many VIs at once).
Wanting SB Xeon.
SB Xeon?

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 9:06 am
by HCMarkus
Absent a dramatic shift in Apple's approach, Sandy Bridge ("SB") Xeons will be the processors in the new Mac Pros. I got lazy; sorry for the abbreviation. :D

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:00 pm
by SixStringGeek
HCMarkus wrote:Watching.
Waiting.
Me too. I need to do something about something soon. I have my older dual quad stuffed to the gills with 500MB disk drives - more than officially supported thanks to undocumented SATA port and a third party rack.

The system is glitchy in a few ways that make me nervous.

1) Often it doesn't find the startup disk on the first go. I have to start it, let the drives warm up and let it fail to find the startup disk, then reboot via the power button. Sometimes it takes several tries.

2) The screen often fails to come back on after an extended sleep. I can login remotely using screen sharing and perform a nice reboot but I can't get the monitor to wake up. I think it is a video card issue because cycling the monitor power (Apple 30" - no longer available) doesn't bring it back. Full shutdown and cold boot is required. This is a drag thanks to issue 1.

3) USB issues - I have plenty of USB ports in use for powering my grunge portable micro speakers, keyboard, pad controller, MIDI express, Microlite (for Mackie control surfaces) and then a hub with just the iLok and Syncrosoft (for VE Pro) because without the hub I don't have enough USB ports. Something is up with that hub though because often disconnecting it can allow me to revive the screen. Sometimes. Having it disconnected at boot also tends to improve drive discoverability. IOW, I do not consider this hub or its little keys totally benign. I'm actually short just one USB port. Very frustrating.

4) I fired the thing up yesterday and my Samples drive went missing and a message was displayed about failing to properly eject a disk (which disk it declined to say - there are actually 7 of them in there). After letting it run a repair all night the samples drive is back this morning but it makes me pretty nervous that something is close to failing in the storage system and it is just possible I've overtaxed the poor thing's power supply.

Anyhow, I can't continue like this. If the samples drive does go, it is composed of a pair of 500M drives in striped raid configuration (for faster throughput). It would take me a week to rebuild it.

Should a really wicked new Mac Pro show up, I think I might ebay the entire thing after removing the extra unsupported internals and replace the lot.

Should one fail to appear before the next pay cycle, I have discovered this bad boy on sale.

Yes boys and girls, that is a 4 TB RAID enclosure using enterprise class drives allowing any single drive to fail without data loss (and enterprise drives often fail with lots of warning - unlike consumer grade stuff). Adding an 8x PCIe interface card should pretty well guarantee IO is not really the bottleneck in the system.

So we will see who ships what first. The RAID goodie may be a winner regardless of processor upgrade.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:53 pm
by MIDI Life Crisis
I waited... and waited... and waited... but I knew if I didn't spring for the new machine when I had the cash in hand, I might blow it on something stupid, like bills. LOL! But I also decided that if I found a great used 8 core at a reasonable price in near or perfect condition, I'd snag it and that's what happened. I wouldn't budget for a new 8 core as there are a few other priorities in the studio, but I am so happy with this machine. It's a 3,1 so it will boot in 64 bit.

C'mon DP 8!

Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 10:55 am
by frankf
MLC,
If you use external drives in enclosures with eSata, drop a dual eSata card in your 3,1 and those drives will fly. I have Sonnet, about $50

Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 11:02 am
by MIDI Life Crisis
Thanks for the tip, Frank. Much appreciated.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 11:11 am
by HCMarkus
+1 on the eSATA recommendation... I've been running four eSATA drives off a High Point card since I bought my Quad G5. My SATA PCIe card ran me a lot more than $50 back in 2006... PCIe SATA cards (and my G5 :D ) were then cutting-edge. eSATA is a no-brainer now.

Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 12:57 pm
by kgdrum
+1
I have 4 drives for backups running off a eSATA card from Firmtek.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 2:29 pm
by HCMarkus

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 5:41 am
by hammerman

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:14 am
by burn em
Finally! I guess we'll have to wait 'til monday to breathe properly. New design, especially rack mount would be sweet. I'll settle for modern specs though.

Re: Hint at new MacPros...

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 5:56 pm
by mikehalloran
Image