New Mac Hexacore - SL backgrade success of sorts

Hi

Rather that wait for the next (nightmare) release of Mac Pros, I just received delivery of a new 6 core (single chip) Mac Pro.


Great! Rubbing my hands together, then discovering that it is installed of course with 10.7 Lion. Which really really really sucks for more reasons that I have space to mention. For example it seems to have altered permissions in some way which prevents Altiverb for example, being able to remember anything. That is after you hack install it (as the installer needs Rosetta - unless you are upgrading a machine from SL to Lion, you cannot install Altiverb unless you manually copy it across) You get the idea… nightmare.

Sooooooo,

I have back graded this machine to 10.6.8. No mean feat I can tell you. A technique requiring the creation of a NetInstall disk image etc etc. It took several hours but I never thought I would actually jump for joy on hearing that dreadful lifestyle jingle at the Snow Leopard setup screen on a fresh install. Joy!

There’s risk attached though. I ahev invalidated my warrantly with Apple by doing this. And the video card is NEWER than 10.6.8. So we will see - and in fact this may be the cause of this one glitch so far):

The Nuendo 5.5.0 video engine keeps crashing, randomly it seems. After getting on the phone Steinberg, I have decided to remove the video engine bundle from the Nuendo package (I use another copy of Nuendo synched for video). So far so good. This was NOT Steinberg’s idea - they just so watch your step but it should be ok.

Any body else just bought a new mac with Lion?

B

If you are interested in the method I used to back-grade, send me a PM. It is not for the faint hearted.

Update - back-graded Hexacore Mac Pro running 10.6.8 smooth silk.
B

Hello gb9,

Thank you for informing us of your progress. We need some new machines but don’t dare move to 10.7 yet. Good to know you were successful.
Hugh

I can say that I have one of those hexcores under my sweaty hands.
Running 10.7.2, smooth as silk.

Maybe a few notches better than 10.6.8 for low latency stress.

Sad to hear you guys having problems with Lion. I don’t (at the moment).
And yeah, Altiverb is troublesome. But then again, they haven’t updated their support for ages.
Altiverb 6 is VERY old these days. And, its easy to copy it from another install.

Pål

Hi Pal

I didn’t try 10.7.2 yet, so your comment is actaully very very interesting. Obviously, it is not great to be running an unsupported setup as such.

I am wondering, did you actually manage to get round the Altiverb problem? Thinking about it, it is actually once of the main problems for me, and if it were solved, I might give 10.7 another go.

The problem I had was every time I started a new session, Altiverb would simply forget where it’s IR and Preset folders were. Did you solve this with a manual instal? Does Alitverb work normally for you?

Thanks

Ben

Altiverb works.
I just copied it from a 10.6 install.

In fact I seldom run the installers for plugins in OSX after I have installed them once.
Its so easy to just copy them around.

P