Turtlerock Forum

Anyone using a notebook with a Mbox with success. I'm looking for a notebook that will work with the new Mbox...oh a windows OS. Anyone suggest one.

Nick

Used to use the old mBox with a powerbook G3, but any of the current iBook's or powerbooks should be fine.

I would think any recent Intel, or non-Via AMD laptop running XP would be up to the job.

be very careful

read http://www.digidesign.com/compato/xp/mbox/

your best best in a single processor is a mobile AMD64 or a pentium M - the P4s are slow.

With PT LE7 dual and dual-core processors look like they will be supported properly (finally) so that could also be a consideration - pentium D or those dual-core AMDs.

oh yeah - the VIA chipsets are some of the best for PTLE. In fact if you are going AMD64 you cant go wrong with the VIA stuff. My desktop is VIA-AMD64 and it flies with PTLE.

read http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB32&Number=360675&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=7&fpart=1

and http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB32&Number=470179&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=7&fpart=1

i am currently building a dual core amd desktop for a client, for 007 le/mbox2. ill post how it goes.

damien

You learn something every day. Not so long ago desktop Via boards for AMD were notorious for their pci latency issues. I bought a MOTU 2408 a couple of years ago which wouldn't work at all with my hardware. A friend had issues with his STAudio gear, until he upgraded to an NForce board.

Of course USB is a different animal but I guess once you get a negative mindset about something it's hard to shake.

yeah, VIA cleaned their act up pretty well in recent years. No longer a name to be feared. 001s have been going strong on VIA too.

Its Intel that have had the problems lately with some (not all) of the 915 chipsets. Nvidia also had a problem (pci/usb related) with early Nforce4 mobos.

Intel resolved their problems with later revisions of the 915 stuff (its all in the first link above), haven't really investigated the Nforce4 stuff cause it was sorta new when I got my AMD64 and I couldn't find if the problems were fixed or not. That was around 12 months ago I guess. Did your friend get an Nforce4 board or was it earlier? The Nforce3's were 'sposed to be quite good.

He has an NForce3, had no problems with it at all.

My next pc (hopefully this year!) will be a dual core Athlon64 on NForce3.

Thanks guys.
Win OS note book, why. Well I have a PT HD3 system on a old G4933 and works just great. I need something really potable like the new Mbox 2 and I was thinking a window based notebook because of all my non music programes are on MS. I have had a look at the Digi site and there are alot of Dell note books that are past by digi techs. Hmmmm looks like Dell maybe the answer, but I have a mate who has a Dell 610 and has had a few problems.
Hmmmmmmmm maybe a Mac G4 IBook.


Nick

Aearth wrote:Thanks guys.
Win OS note book, why. Well I have a PT HD3 system on a old G4933 and works just great. I need something really potable like the new Mbox 2 and I was thinking a window based notebook because of all my non music programes are on MS. I have had a look at the Digi site and there are alot of Dell note books that are past by digi techs. Hmmmm looks like Dell maybe the answer, but I have a mate who has a Dell 610 and has had a few problems.
Hmmmmmmmm maybe a Mac G4 IBook.


Nick

Nic,
I know this is an old thread, but I was doing some searching..
What did you end up getting??
I use an MBox (original) with a Dell Inspiron 9300 - I spec'd it completely off the Digidesgin website so that there would be NO compatibility issues. 1Gid RAM, 160G HDD + F/W for my 250G Audio drive.
Well, its been running for well over a year without an issue (I origianlly started on PT6.9 as well) and now run 7.3.1cs4 and it works very well.
TimS..

When running tools on my dell laptop i use select a custom hardware profile on startup that doesn't load half the things windows usually loads. Helped a lot.

Mark Andrew Bassett wrote:When running tools on my dell laptop i use select a custom hardware profile on startup that doesn't load half the things windows usually loads. Helped a lot.

Hi Mark,
I do the same, pretty much nothing is loaded into memory excpet the minimum required tools (CD/DVD device drivers, PT drivers, etc..
Free'd up so much more resources..
I use MSCONFIG to remove most loading drivers (network, wi-fi, bluetooth, etc) and software and this is great too, just a shame it wont remember that in the Hardware Profiles as well..
TimS..

"When running tools on my dell laptop i use select a custom hardware profile on startup that doesn't load half the things windows usually loads. Helped a lot."

i just got a laptop recently for live performance...so this stuff interests me...

what exactly are u guys doing in this config??

jkhuri44 wrote:"When running tools on my dell laptop i use select a custom hardware profile on startup that doesn't load half the things windows usually loads. Helped a lot."

i just got a laptop recently for live performance...so this stuff interests me...

what exactly are u guys doing in this config??

Jamil,
If you are running Windose..
Go to Start menu, click run and type msconfig
You will be presented with a menu like the one below..


The Services and Startup Tabs are the ones where you can choose which drivers you want loaded or unloaded.




You can select or deselect all the items of your chosing in these 2 tabs..
Happy configuring..
TimS..

is it dangerous to deselect any specific tasks? or can u run wild the way you want and turn off everything ??

oh, btw...
thanks for the effort in your reply, greatly appreciated!

:)

Jamil,
There are ESSENTIAL services that cannot be turned off and it tells you which ones.
You can pretty much run wild, but obviously think about what services/drivers you dont want loaded beforehand.
However, if something doesnt work properly or a specific driver is required, you can go back and reselect the driver/service needed and reboot.
See the circled area in image to highlight essential services..


TimS..
Thanks man.
No probs - just trying to help.

Hi Tim
I used to use the Mbox with my laptop.....no name type as I got it from TPG (the web people) and it worked well. The problem was the latency from the Mbox2 which drove me nuts, so I flicked it of and bought a Mbox Pro (firewire) with a Apple Macbook. Works just great.

nIC

Hey Nic,
Yeah the F/W MBox Pro looks pretty good - I'm sure latency wouldn't become an issue with e F/W option..
USB is just that little too slow..
TimS..

Use msconfig for the "Startup" items but use services.msc (Start->Run then type in services.msc) instead of "Services" in msconfig. The reason is you can set services you don't think you'll need to "manual" whereupon they will only start if Windows really thinks it needs it. This will stop you from disabling services that the system actually needs to boot/run or other services that will make things difficult for you when disabled. Once you have done this you can restart windows and then go back in, work out which "manual" services have started then readup more about those services, find out any dependencies and then set them to "disabled" to kill them permanently once you are confident you really don't need those services.

Stuart.

jmedigital wrote:Use msconfig for the "Startup" items but use services.msc (Start->Run then type in services.msc) instead of "Services" in msconfig. The reason is you can set services you don't think you'll need to "manual" whereupon they will only start if Windows really thinks it needs it. This will stop you from disabling services that the system actually needs to boot/run. Once you have done this you can restart windows and then go back in, work out which "manual" services have started then readup more about those services, find out any dependencies and then set them to "disabled" to kill them permanently once you are confident you really don't need those services.

Stuart.

Stuart,
Thanks for the info - I was unaware of this also!!
Will make things even more 'tweakable'.
Thanks for the tip.
TimS..

No problem, I've managed to get down to around 8 or 9 services this way. Even disabling services like "workstation" so I don't even have to "login" as it were. This system just starts up straight into the desktop in around 10 secs. *However*, this system is not on the network.

Stuart.

jmedigital wrote:No problem, I've managed to get down to around 8 or 9 services this way. Even disabling services like "workstation" so I don't even have to "login" as it were. This system just starts up straight into the desktop in about 10-15 secs. *However*, this system is not on the network.

Stuart.

After running services.msc, I have disabled a further 4 items - down to 11 now..
Very cool.
TimS..

don't disable internet explorer - you'll need it to view help files and stuff, even if you don't ever ever go online with the system / profile you're tweaking.

i've played with hardware profiles, and now i believe the best you can do is actually run seperate windoze OS's from different hard-drive partitions. hardware profiling just doesn't give you the same smack-down ability as actually choosing seperate operating system installations.
(or completly seperate computers, if you can)

my PTLE rig loads in about 10 seconds, has approximately -3 services operating (including MMRrefresh, ofcourse) and runs like a street worker to the chemist on meth-day (thats FAST)

chris
mfdu

Or...

You can buy a Mac from me...