Macos 9 Or Os X?, To buy a dual booting Mac or not? Options

[zeze]

hi all!

I'd like to buy a new dual 1.25G Mac, but I have a doubt about it;
I use a 9600/450, 640MB, OS 9.1, with Digidesign d24 card and Pro Tools 5.1.3, plus Native Instruments, and for this reason I'm planning to buy a dual booting Mac 1.25G to continue using my stuff; I dont know how PT 6 manage soft synths since Direct Connect it's dead, also, when the NI synths will be available for X?
Please, if there is someone who made this upgrade, I'd need a suggestion about which mac to buy: dual booting mac or not? what I'd miss with Firewire 400 instead of 800?
my last question: do I need to install a 10k or 15k rpm hard disk inside the mac to make 32 tracks playback without problems? if yes, what accelerator card suits best?

thanks in advance
peace
zeze

[tnitz]

I agree with tacoboy regarding having the new drive devoted to media. You could consider partioning a drive for your system software - I don't, but many do.

I've not had luck with serial port stuff in OSX, but I gave up easily - don't have any help to offer there. I also know there were some problems with SCSI cards in at least one iteration of OSX - again I gave up and moved on.

Sorry I am not more help but it does sound like your hardware is suggesting a dual boot machine - you may find you stay in OS9 until you can work all the configuration issues out. My approach was different and not ideal - I simply forced myself to switch and layed aside all my legacy stuff - It's been a few years and I still haven't replaced everything. But I also have a few beige Macs around to use when I need to use some of that hardware.

Also, firewire 800 holds some promise for the future so I have also been somewhat reluctant to jump into alot of SCSI or firewire 400 peripherals where speed is paramount. I hope to get a PCI card for firewire 800 as soon as available.