Cubase VST 24 or 32 v5.1 for mac

Hello!
After nearly 20 years out of yhe music business, and with a 17 year old in music college, i decided to drag my old studio and Mac G4 out of the attic. Connected it all up and it fired up no problem. However after a week or so, the main drive failed! Everything was backed up on the other drive so it fires up from the backup system folder, and all cubase files are there (copied ages ago from main drive), but Cubase does not fire up! Tries and fails, no error message.
Can anyone help? Ideally i think i need to borrow or buy new discs (mine long lost), anyone out there still have any?
Version: Cubase VST/24 V5.1 or similar for Mac OS 9.1
If not, any idea how to reconfigure to get it working again?
Thanks for any help from anyone old enough to remember!!
Alex

1 Like

I try to remember whether that version used a dongle or the Challenge/Response scheme for copy protection. If it is version 5.1 (Cubase VST/32) it might be the dongle. Do you have it attached to the Mac?

Hi Alex,
welcome to the forum.
You can download the installers for Cubase VST 5 and the updates from the page linked below. I donā€™t know if it actually works but itā€™s certainly worth a try.

Hi Johnny,
Thanks for the reply!
No dongle on this, installed with cd back in the day and not touched it since, did 1000s of hours then, and worked now until drive failureā€¦
Lost all discs long ago (as well as all my sound libraries, Akai discs etc) which is very annoying, but such is life!
In theory, everything inc licence was backed up on second drive, but it doesnt start at all from that copy. I also have VST24 V4 on there, this starts but ask for cd, which of course i dont have!
Any thoughts?

Hi Martin,
Thanks for this, unfortunately this will require a disc, which was lost long ago with all my discs. Guess i need new discs, unless there is a work around, but discs are like hens teeth!!

Before the USB dongle Cubase used a challenge&response system on the Mac, which of course is no longer supported by Steinberg. If your drive failed you need to re-authorize your computerā€¦ but you canā€™t.
In other words - this Cubase wonā€™t resurrect.

Or maybe you really just need to find the proper installer files.

You can download the ISO image from the webpage and burn it to a CD if required. Or were the old original disks some special ones also used for copy protection?

I think they were standard discs, i bought the g4, with software, digi 001 interface, midi interface, firewire drive and some other gear all at the same time. Added some plugins and other tger odd bits etc over the years, but remember having the original software box. I think it may be unsaveable!! Ahhh!

Hmm itā€™s been a loooooong time, but I seem to recall VST24 (aka Cubase VST 4) on the Mac only needed a serial number? My Windows version has the big parallel port dongle, but when I switched to the Mac that thing went back in the box where it still sits to this day.

Interesting! The g4 is in the shop getting a new drive etc, i may be able to read the serial number from somewhere in the backip files i supposeā€¦anyone have any idea if that can be done and how / where it might be?
Ill get the machine back next week and have a dig aroundā€¦

In the mean timeā€¦anyone out there with discs???

The ISO image of the installation disk is available from the page linked above. It should be sufficient to burn it on a CD. According to the information I collected so far, you therefore donā€™t need the original disks from Steinberg.

Thanks everyone for the help, ill update the outcome when i have one!!

Hi Martin,
Got my G4 back, downloaded the disc image to my PC (???) then copied the file to the mac via a usb drive and burned the file onto a ā€˜dataā€™ disc (using Toast 5). That was no problem, but when I insert the disc it just says it canā€™t read the disc and asks me to select software to read it. This doesnā€™t seem to be right! Can you tell me what Iā€™m doing wrong? The PC maybe? Very sorry for my lack of knowledgeā€¦

Hi Alex,
did you just burn the ISO file to a data disk or did you create the disk from the ISO image? Youā€™d need to do the latter because the ISO file contains all the data to recreate the file system on the disk.
I donā€™t know Toast 5. Does it provide a function like ā€œBurn CD from ISOā€, ā€œBurn Disk Imageā€ or the like? Maybe you need to use a different application. Since Iā€™m not a Mac user, I canā€™t really suggest one, unfortunately.
On Windows, you just have to right-click on the ISO file and select ā€œBurn disk imageā€ from the context menu. So thereā€™s no separate software needed.

Toast is very ā€˜macā€™ so if youā€™re PC you probably wonā€™t know of it. It seems that I need to add the image under the ā€˜otherā€™ tab in Toast (rather than ā€˜dataā€™), but when I do it says: ā€œCubase_VST_5.0_Mac.iso is not a valid disc image. (Size is not a multiple of 2352)ā€. Ummmā€¦very frustrating!
Thanks for the help anyway!

You need to use the Copy function and load the image and burn it there.

Other is the same as using Data or Audio to make a new disc from files. Thatā€™s where you make new disc images or burn ā€˜otherā€™ formats like those weird Mac/PC hybrid discs from the 90s/00s.

Well, some good news!
It took me half a day to work out that if you hold the mouse down on the ā€˜otherā€™ tab in Toast 5.0, a menu pops up :crazy_face:! Selecting ā€˜Disk Imageā€™ and then ā€˜Mountā€™ created a virtual disc on the desktop. From there a double click and the installer runs! No need to burn a disc at all. Installed OK, used a generic serial number (for standard installation you need any 9 digits starting with 02 - I used 029876543) and it installed!
Restarted and it openedā€¦but no audio engine! This stumped me for a while, then realised I needed the Digidesign ASIO added to the ASIO folder in the Cubase folder. Added that, opened Cubase, selected the Digidesign instead of Apple Audio in the Cubase Audio Setup page, quit and opened Cubase again.
Andā€¦it seems to be working! Iā€™ll need to do some actual recordings etc. but right now I get the click generated out of the Digi001 card. That normally means all is well!
Thanks everyone for the help! Hope this may be useful for someone somewhere!