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Hackintosh and Pro Tools

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Older versions of OSX
When you purchase Lion from the App Store, you'll get 10.7.4 (that's a good thing).

I may need to stand corrected on this - I just downloaded Lion on my "gig laptop" that was still running Snow Leopard. Started the install & then went to lunch. Just got home & the install was complete. Low & behold, it's 10.7.5. I won't need to run ProTools on this machine, so no need to try & back-step to 10.7.4.

If you don't already have a pre-10.7.5 version of Lion purchased, you may need to see about purchasing a USB key version to get an earlier version of Lion.
 
Where do I purchase that
 
Where do I purchase that

That's a very good question. Since I've previously purchased Lion from the App Store, it's still available to me to re-download as needed.

If you have never purchased Lion before (either from App Store, or from physical Apple Store on USB), then that's going to be a bit more problematic. When Apple released Mountain Lion, they pulled Lion's availability (both download & USB) from stores.

A quick Google Search resulted in this post on Apple Support forum. That might be your best bet right now.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!
:thumbup:
 
Thanks, that totally worked. I went to AVID website and looked up which OS is compatible with my version of Pro Tools. Then I called the Apple number listed above and it was a piece of cake. The correct OS disc will be here sometime next week.

Thank you,
Todd
 
((WHEW)) Good deal! Glad it all worked out!!
 
Hey there citidog, the link in my sig will take you to the build I just did with parts list, links, etc. I am a long time Pro Tools user and I am running this build with PT 10 on a MBox Pro (Firewire) with Waves, Bomb Factory and Avid plus with the latest gen iLok (USB). It is working great and I am getting ready to start some sessions for a new Christmas CD that we are putting out this year. The only thing I would do different is go for a motherboard with working ethernet and either Thunderbolt or FW I/O for the audio interfaces. The i5 3750K CPU is fine and anything faster than that is just gravy IHMO. I used an 128 GB SSD to load up the OS and PT on and I have plenty of room to spare. I also use Avastor HDX 1TB external FW 400 drives but I stuck a Seagate 1TB drive in the box because I had the room and the money and I wanted more drive storage. I would be glad to answer any questions I can. Just give me a holler! :)
-Frank
 
OK I am about to install my operating system. I ordered Snow Leopard 10.6.3. I have Pro Tools 8 the most recent OS one can install and have Pro Tools 8 work is 10.6.8. Any later OS version won't work. A few questions. Do I need to update the bios BEFORE I install the OS? My motherboard is the GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 version 1.3. It has Bios version 6. I'm afraid if I update to a newer bios version Ill have trouble with the older version of Pro Tools I'm running. I have also read it is best to install Pro Tools on OS 10.6.3 before updating to 10.6.8. You read so many differing opinions on how to install everything, I get a little confused and unsure of myself.

Todd
 
I built a Hackintosh specifically to use in conjunction with Pro Tools that can be rack-mounted and that has a VGA output.

System specifics:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
Processor: Core i3 2105 Sandy Bridge
Memory: 2x4GB DDR3 – 1333 Crucial RAM
Video Card: PNY Nvidia GeForce 210 video card
OS: OS 10.7.4
Hard Drive: WD 500 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM
Firewire: Siig NN-E20012-S2 2-port PCIe Firewire card -1394A
System Profile: Mac mini 5,1 profile
Audio Software: Pro Tools 9.0.6 – I want to run PT 9 since the rest of our facility is still on PT 9
Audio Interface: Digi 002R Pro Tools interface

Pro Tools loads OK, but when I hit the space bar to play the session – “The hardware held off interrupts too long” error pops up. I have had this problem before with a G5 and I think the answer was to put in a Siig firewire card instead of using the built-in Firewire ports. Adjusting the Hardware buffer size never worked. If I try using the built-in audio interface or Pro Tools aggregate I/O for a playback engine, Pro Tools will run, so the problem seems to be isolated to the Digi 002R and Firewire. With the built-in audio interface it will even playback a session with 36 tracks with no problem.

The Digi 002R interface works on a G5 running Pro Tools 7.3.1 using the same model Siig firewire card and it works with my other early Hackintosh build (Intel DG965WH motherboard w/Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM running Snow Leopard OS 10.6.3, and Pro Tools 9.0.5) with the firewire card and PNY graphics card from the above build. The problem with that build is that there aren’t enough x16 PCIe slots to add a Fibre Channel HBA.

Sometimes when Pro Tools is launched, it asks to update the firmware in the Digi 002, but that always fails. This can happen on either the above build or the Snow Leopard system. I had problems with the iLok not being recognized. I had to unplug the iLok and plug it back in twice everytime Pro Tools was launched. That problem seems to have been corrected by changing the LAN driver, but now the sleep mode doesn’t seem to work, which I need for the HD3000 VGA graphics. The Firewire interface works OK with an external hard drive.

The Digi 002R is normally hooked up to a Mac Pro and runs Pro Tools 9 on Snow Leopard with no problems.

Ultimately I want to use the built-in HD3000 graphics, but in order to isolate the problem for now, I am using the PNY card. I also have tried running with only 4 GB RAM.

Any suggestions on how to fix my Hackintosh Firewire to Digi 002R interface problem?
 
Wow I'm ready to go and I cant even get past the simple first step of updating the bios. I am following the instructions to the tee. I have put the the update file on a USB flash drive. When I start the the update utility it cannot find the USB drive. Any suggestions?
 
I want to share my experience on the matter and maybe someone could shed some light on the issues and grab some advice from it as well:

I build the CustomMac recommended build part by part for 2011 that is:

- Intel Core i7-2600K
- GA-Z68XP-UD3
- AMD Radeon HD 6870
- 60GB OCZ Nocti Series SATA 3Gb/s
- 16GB Corsair 1600Mhz DDR3
- Corsair 650watt

I did it to power up my studio running a Digi 002 Control Surface/Interface.

I first installed lion and took it up to 10.7.4. It worked as a charm apart from the sleep feature being disabled.

Then when I installed ProTools LE 8 (i know it is not supposed to work with Lion but I wanted to give it a try as I read around that it was working for some people) and updated it to 8.0.5 and installed the Digi 002/003 family drivers (got them from avid website) it actually worked quite well... for a while.

As soon as I did this install, the boot up of the hackintosh will display the white screen with the apple and will crash displaying a series of code in black related to what I supposed is conflicts in some matter with the digidesign drivers or some other stuff.

The solution for this will be to boot up with the Unibeast USB installation drive and select to boot up from USB. This will open up the OSX installation screen for which you will only need to say next until you can access the top menus to quit the installation and either restart or shutdown the computer. After restart, the chimera window will come up again when booting from USB but this time choosing the hard drive instalation will work. No crash code there, normal boot.

I lived with this method of booting up my computer for a while and I had ProTools LE 8.0.5 working flaulessly with waves plugins, Reason, auto-tune, the lot...until recently.

The only change I made was that I was mixing before using headphones and now I got a pair of Yamahas HS50's. I mention this because when I connected them is when I started having problems. I really don't see how this can be related to it but it is how it happened. Also for some reason I had to re-run multibeast with the DSDT because the firewire port in my mother board stop being recognized (the digi 002 did not detected being plugged). This will fix the firewire and I could run protools again.

Now when I am using ProTools, after 10 - 15 minutes, the whole computer just crashes. Basically it stops responding, not even able to move the mouse.

I decided to start from scratch (format my drive and re-install as it was working ok before but not anymore). I took advantage of this and try upgrading to Mountain Lion and test Protools LE 8 there. For those wondering, I actually followed the same procedure as before and got it running. It did work but then again... crashed/freezed.

After reading this thread I've decided to buy a dedicated FireWire PCI card with dual TI chips [AMAZON-uk]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002UOLZ5S[/AMAZON-uk] and see if maybe this is what is causing the problem.

I will first try with ML and if it fails I will downgrade to Lion and if it fails I will dg to Snow Leopare which was the last OS 'supported' by Protools LE 8.

I will post my results when I get the card and try it out. Pls let me know if you can think of anything else that might be the cause of the problem...

Hope someone finds this useful in some way :)
 
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