resolution of built-in bugs in older hardware chipsets. faster RAM support, possibly improved 'picky-ness' about RAM module types. To be more specific about why I would prefer a (much) later machine: If anyone has an idea what exactly it is about OS 9.x that messes up the Medianet card so much, I'm all-ears. A Radeon 9000 and GeForce4 Ti4600 are available in my collection for best video performance (only concerned with best 2D and especially scrolling performance).
Obviously I'd hope for the MDD series, but I also have a Quicksilver at my disposal with a Dual 1.8GHz upgrade of it's own.
I'd like to know your thoughts on how far 8.6 might be taken, particularly in the video card driver department (especially where it concerns ATI cards). I would happily back down to 8.6 if I could use later CPU hardware though. Given that I'm likely the only member here who knows about the Sonic Solutions systems in-depth, and have experimented thoroughly to resolve the issue, I doubt this problem will ever be fixed within the OS 9.x environment. A faster CPU helps a little but never allows it to completely function. It sorta works, slowly, but not completely. I can't pin-point the exact source of the slowdown. As soon as you hit OS 9.x there are serious fundamental issues created once its extension loads, which drags down the speed of the whole computer. Medianet is a hybrid of a specialized SCSI accelerator host card with FDDI networking supporting AppleTalk. While the core hardware of this DAW system can operate alone without issue, performance and flexibility is greatly enhanced by adding Medianet. My situation stems from unresolved problems with Sonic Solutions systems where they chose to abandon development of their driver for Medianet.
(Or anything else far better than a Graphite G4/AGP.) Now that I have a FW800 MDD with Dual 1.8GHz Sonnet upgrade booting the unsupported 9.2.2, I'd really like to know if it would be possible to have it also boot 8.6. There is much to be gained where it concerns CPU-intensive tasks, improved video speed/resolution/dual monitor support, PCI bus integrity/speed, and the general smooth UI feel of getting beyond a Graphite G4/AGP. This is something I'm very interested in because I've pretty much exhausted all avenues for moving past 8.6 with one particular piece of hardware that is a preferred part of one type of DAW I use. There was a comment from a user suggesting that the technical understandings gained from this development work might later allow OS 9.x-minimum machines to boot the earlier OS 8.6 too. All the excitement around here for a while has obviously surrounded the booting of OS 9.2.2 on unsupported machines.