Setup Advice Needed, midi/audio setup on emac Options

[mortalengines]

I have heard that the emac wasn't really a good unit for music production (though I did some Reason sequencing with one at one point with few to no problems at all). If you want to do some serious music production, you will need at least an 800 Mhz G4 with 512MB (more is better) RAM. G4s are cheaper now & you can find a used one on Ebay for a reasonable price. If you want to slog it out with what you got you should post your real problems on this site & be a specific as possible & I am sure that somebody here could help you.

[flapper]

Based on all your suggestions, for starters I'm going to max out the memory, which for this machine is 1024.

One suggestion was that I upgrade to Panther, and that there were copies available on eBay for cheap. Will I run into hassles doing it this way? I know more about PCs than Macs, but I can do simple things Apple-wise. How do the rest of you feel about the upgrade? I got the impression that 10.2.8 is not looked on too kindly for purposes of music.

Re. Opcode, would I really have to have an older machine to use 9; could I boot up on this machine in 9 and use it just as effectively (I did discover how to boot up in 9 while avoiding what was called the "Classic".

I really appreciate all your suggestions. I will continue to add specific questions as they arise. It'll take me about a week to get my memory. Thanks.

[Bubowski]

Hey Flapper,

If you can already dual-boot, check out Vision. Many Visioneers use dual-boot machines so they can keep using their fav midi app. I use vision on 500MHz G3 Powerbook (Pismo) and run Logic express on a 2GHz G5 iMac. Mainly using Vision and Galaxy (editor/librarian) for all my old synths. OMS has a great facility for managing patch names which can't be beat by todays sequencers. Have to say I LOVE using Softsynths in Logic..too sweet!

--Bub

[Bubowski]

Forgot to mention that Vivion WILL NOT work under Classic...the machine MUST boot into OS9 for it to work.

[flapper]

Thank you Bubowski. I'll look into opcodeusers.com. Any further information is really helpful.

Re. upgrading my OS from 10.2.8, I have a CD-RW, not a DVD drive. Which means I would have to (if I bought it from Apple), buy the OS on DVD, send it in, pay $9.95 more and get the OS on CDs. I'm a little leary of doing this, especially since a clean install was recommended by someone--meaning, I assume I would lose my anti-virus license as well? How about dual boot capability?

I have upgraded CD-ROMs on PCs once or twice, but I don't know if I'd dare try to put in a DVD drive on an eMac that doesn't look too easy to upgrade or even open up, outside of adding memory. I hesitate to buy a second external drive--it sounds like the old expensive way to upgrade. Or is it? Can I get Panther (still would like to hear what the rest of you have to say on the necessity of upgrading to 10.3) on a CD?

Another question (or two): what about Apple's Garageband? Also, is that available on CD. I see that iLife ships as a DVD.

Thanks for bearing with all my basic questions, many of which have been answered elsewhere in this forum. I initially tried answering some of them via searches, but the volume is such that I got easily sidetracked.