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Magma & G4

M

macaroni

Active Member
I just won a brand new 6 slot Magma on eBay for $255. I bought it for use with the G5 I plan to buy in April or May or whenever the next round of G5s come out (hopefully sooner than later).

I've got 2 UAD-1 cards and will inevitably get a 3rd when I get the G5. In the meantime, would I lose any processing power if I installed my 2 UAD-1 cards in the Magma vs leaving them in the G4 slots? With my RME PCI card in the 3rd G4 slot, I don't have room for the Magma, so I'd have to put the UAD-1 cards in it to make room for it. I also plan to install some hard drives in the Magma.

Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.

Thanks.
 
G

giles117

Active Member
To Echo...

Drives in the Magma SUCK!!!!!!

I have a drive in mine (due to space issues, I have 5 HD's in my System so far, 4 in the G4, 1 in the Magma)

With the SMAE controller card in the G4, I get 50MB/sec throughput, with the card and drive in the magam, I am lucky if I get 10MB/sec transfer from the SAME drive.Card config.


Drives in the Magma!!! NO!!!!!!

I tried diff controllers and drives, same response.

Now here is an Idea. Get an SATA card with the 4 external SATA connectors, make sure the magma is right next to the g4, get the 21\" SATA cables and place SATA drives in the Magma, with SATA cables running out of the magma and to the g4 where you have placed your SATA card. :)

Just thought of that one :)
 
M

macaroni

Active Member
What if I just use the drive for storage, with no active use during recording/mixing? Will that still affect the throughput?
 
U

UAJames

Universal Audio
UA Official
It will depend a lot on the actual HD controller card itself. I have the 4 slot Magma with 2 UAD-1s and a Sonnet Tempo ATA controller card running 2 7200 RPM drives (both are maxtor, but I don't know exact models) all connected to my powerbook and I haven't had any problems thus far with data transfers to/from the card. These are not RAIDed though, which can add some overhead of it's own, and also, I am rarely running more than 16 tracks+samples, so if you are doing heavy streaming from the drives (24+ simultaneously), this can affect throughput to/from the UAD-1 cards. In general if you have room in the G4 for internal drives, use those before starting in on the Magma (the same would apply with the G5).
 
M

macaroni

Active Member
How many internal HDs can I put in my AGP G4? I've got 2 x 120 GB HDs in there now, and I was just thinking I could add the original 30 GB HD that I removed, and use it in the Magma for extra storage only. Does the Magma come with an HD controller built in or do you have to add that? It has the drive bays.
 
U

UAJames

Universal Audio
UA Official
If you don't have an optical drive or zip drive installed you can technically have 4 in there ;) You'll probably want to keep the optical drive, so if you don't have a zip drive, you can actually put the hard drive in where the zip drive normally would mount and use that IDE cable there.

Magma has an extra option for either SCSI or Firewire drive support, or you can get a Mac capable PCI HD controller from local computer store and drop it in.
 
G

giles117

Active Member
James, I have tried 4 different controllers, 1 from Sonnet, 2 from Adaptec and 1 from Firmtek. All with the same results.

And as he asked, For storage is why I keep the drive in the Magma. Strictly Storage Devce.
 
U

UAJames

Universal Audio
UA Official
James, I have tried 4 different controllers, 1 from Sonnet, 2 from Adaptec and 1 from Firmtek. All with the same results.
Click to expand...
Hmm. You're probably doing more tracks and UAD-1 plugins than me, maybe I'll try a stress test on my home system and see what it can handle...I'm curious now :)
 
G

giles117

Active Member
JAmes, I get that throughput with nothing running but the Base OS.

No big deal, 250Gig HD's have made life a tad easier for me in this arena.

And external SATA Controller Cards further simplified my need for speed and volume of storage.
 
J

J-Mac!

Member
UAJames said:
so if you don't have a zip drive, you can actually put the hard drive in where the zip drive normally would mount and use that IDE cable there.
Click to expand...
Hey UAJames, you mean to tell me that I can actually put another hard drive in the slot where I would put a zip, or another CDR drive? WOW, this would be some great news if this is true. Please let me know.
 
G

giles117

Active Member
The Quicksilvers will house 4 drives and 2 optical drives. (I had both in my old Quicksilver 800) SO plenty of room to have fun :)
 
J

J-Mac!

Member
giles117 said:
The Quicksilvers will house 4 drives and 2 optical drives.
Click to expand...
Hey Giles117, I didn't even know I could go past 2 drives in my Quicksilver. So this is some GREAT news for me. I've been wanting to expand it, but just didn't know how to go about doing it after I put in the second hard drive. I also added a firewire hard drive which gave me three. Now I need to go after the fourth drive which will help me out a lot. Thanks for sharing the info!!

"J"
 
U

UAJames

Universal Audio
UA Official
Hey J,
On your Quicksilver, it will *hold* 4 drives, but there are only cables for 2 (not counting the extra one I mentioned from where the Zip drive normally goes). There are 4 mounting brackets. You do have the option of getting a PCI Harddrive controller for running more drives, the only caution I would give there is that it is more PCI activity and creates the *possibility* for reduced UAD-1 performance from the added PCI bandwidth. The later model Quicksilvers, which are affectiontely known as the Mirror Drive Door (MDD) models, do have built-in support for 4 HDs and 2 optical drives (they are louder too).
 
G

giles117

Active Member
Better yet, put your UAD-1 in slot 4 and a ATA card in slot 2.
 
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