upgrading from Dinosaur-Land ....

[Gary_101]

Hi Folks,

well it's time upgrade my dinosaur pentium 4 system,
and hopefully my 4.5 scope to 5.1.

I'm on the brink of purchasing a used Dell Optiplex 760, which is an Intel Core2,
with 6 gigs of ram. the vendor will install windows 7 - 64 bit on a 1 TB drive.

I'm running two Pulsar boards chained together a PI and a PII.

The Sonic-Core website recommends i5 or i7 processors on an Asus mainboard, so I"m a little
off the mark for that one.

Can anyone make any comments as to whether this system would work OK with
the new Scope 5.1 software (which I'm also ready to purchase) ...?

(as an aside, could I run my old Scope 4.5 on a win7-64 bit system, or is that a no-no?)

thanks for any inputs or perspectives!

Gary

[dawman]

You'll need 5.1 for the cards, I just got it, and also bought an older Xeon and Supermicro for 2 x cards.
I don't want any issues with PCI and I have i7 Z77/PCI-e for my XITE-1 so I haven;t got any idea how the new PCI slots, if you can find any on these newer boards, would work.
Like the first i7s as they are the most mature and triple channel RAM is great for VST stuff.

[garyb]

core2 machines work well, no problem.

why 64bit? unless you use a lot of Kontact samples at the same time, no audio apps can utilize that much ram. 32bit w/ 4gb will be plenty for most operations, if you turn off Aero in windows 7. it's certainly not bad to use 64bit windows with Scope except that the STS samplers won't work.

v4 does NOT work in windows 7. it's not a matter of a no-no, it's that it won't work at all. when Creamware, the maker of v4, went out of business, win7 didn't even exist. if you want to use vista, win7 or win8, you need to purchase the v5.1 upgrade from the Sonic|Core webshop. v5.1 also works with xp.

[Gary_101]

Thanks Gary & Dawman ... *sigh* sense of relief.

before I buy the upgrade off Sonic-Core's site, I note they have two upgrade options:

1) the regular upgrade to SCOPE 5.1, which is 239 Euros
2) the upgrade to SCOPE 5.1 for 3/4 DSP cards only, which is 159 Euros.

I'm a little confused as to which one I'd need for my 2 cards (PI & PII) ...
the 2nd upgrade says for 3/4 DSP cards only, but only mentions PI in their specs.

thanks for any clarification of this offer ...!

Gary

(oops [edit]... just noted that PII is a 6-DSP card, so I guess I have to shell out the big money ...)

[garyb]

you can buy either. it depends on which card you want to upgrade.

personally, i think the P1 is getting pretty darned old, and it's the one most likely to be discarded in the future, so upgrading the bigger card might make sense, even though it costs more. on the other hand, if the P1 died, you could transfer the license for 98euro, so you might just upgrade the cheaper card.

just remember, the keys go with a specific card's serial number. while only one card needs to be upgraded for both to work in the same computer, only the one card would actually have the v5.1 key. if the cards are seperated, the other card would need to be upgraded for it to work in vista/win7/win8.

[Gary_101]

Thanks Gary,

It's still a bit 'muddy' for me ...
So, if I get the cheaper upgrade, it only "upgrades" my P1 card, but I can still operate both cards (daisy-chained together) thru this software upgrade ... or .. ?

I recall purchasing a special "add-on" synth-mixer package for the Pulsar mix (can't recall if it was tied to a particular card or not?).

Likely it would be registered in the "Keyfiles for Pulsar 4", which are 2 ".rgy" files with the word SCOPE followed by what looks like serial numbers for my P1 & P2 cards. Would this additional package still be registered for use if I purchased the less-expensive upgrade? I doubt I'll be separating the two cards in the near future; therefore it's safe to opt for the cheaper upgrade.

maybe I'll try to contact Sonic-Core to get their 'dope' on the issue ...

thanks again.
Gary

[garyb]

It's still a bit 'muddy' for me ...
So, if I get the cheaper upgrade, it only "upgrades" my P1 card, but I can still operate both cards (daisy-chained together) thru this software upgrade ... or .. ?

yep.

I recall purchasing a special "add-on" synth-mixer package for the Pulsar mix (can't recall if it was tied to a particular card or not?).

Likely it would be registered in the "Keyfiles for Pulsar 4", which are 2 ".rgy" files with the word SCOPE followed by what looks like serial numbers for my P1 & P2 cards. Would this additional package still be registered for use if I purchased the less-expensive upgrade? I doubt I'll be separating the two cards in the near future; therefore it's safe to opt for the cheaper upgrade.

yes, keys are ALWAYS for a specific card. yes, it should be in the keyfile.

maybe I'll try to contact Sonic-Core to get their 'dope' on the issue ...

that's me....

[dante]

If you pay for the full upgrade its likely you may get many plugins you don't have already (unless you bought all the mix/master/synth packs before). Well worth it IMHO. Then run both cards on the one system w/ STDM cable(s).

[Gary_101]

yeah right on Dante, i'm going for the full Monty.

yanked my cards out to transport to the new machine; now the scope 4.5 software refuses to run the uninstaller.
Oddly enough the install doens't even show up on XP's add-remove software panel.

anyone know if there's any nec. reg prunings to do or other system files to remove if I "manually" uninstall?

thanks!

Gary

[astroman]

righty right - you have to run the uninstaller with the cards installed
otherwise it won't run - always been this way

but there isn't much to uninstall, it removes 1-3 entries in the registry and trashes the Scope folder
imho you can do the latter manually and just intercept the autostart
the (remaining) entries in the registry are just folder references or so
(it will probably say something like: 'cannot get access to the Scope hardware' now)

cheer, Tom

[jksuperstar]

For safe keeping, it might be worth while doing a backup of your key file first. Just because you never know.