I've been making the rounds of several Avid sites trying to find out if my current laptop will accept Avid's Mojo. I've learned a lot, mainly how little I know, and how much less I understand.

By now my mind is drowning in a sea of floating data flotsum - I'm told I need a motherboard with... "PCI Bus Segments"... The only motherboards that provide this feature are any of the Intel E7505 server boards. .." But I can get away with an Intel 865 and 875 motherboards that have 800 MHz front side buses with hyperthreading chips, like the Intel 3.2 GHz processor. BUT "...These motherboards do not support external drives with Mojo..." AND... "You will need at least 1 GB of RAM, and an nVidia 980 XGL video card for OGL acceleration..."

Geesh! All I want to know if MY little VAIO, which has been running XDV PRO with no problems, will run Mojo. So this is not really a question about Avid or NLEs - it's about what makes up the system I have. I've asked Sony and Avid and have gotten jargon and no clear, definitive answers.

So here is what I have:

SONY VAIO PCG-V505ACP
1 GB RAM
Pentium 4 M 2.2 GHz CPU
integrated 1394 port
additional 1394 PC card
Windows XP Pro (current build)
XDV Pro 4.3.1

That's it. Is there an Intel mobo with "PCI Bus Segments" in there, or something close to it? Is there an "an nVidia 980 XGL video card for OGL acceleration..." anywhere insight?

Searcing the specs of my system, as per Sony's instructions, does not reveal anything as specific as this information. So I guess I'm asking this in this forum full of friends, hoping someone can tell me - yeah, it might work; or "don't even try it, I have a VAIO just like yours and it set my toaster on fire..." Something like that.

So there you have it. Sorry for the length.

I'm 100% sure there isn't an nVidia 980 XGL (http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadro4xgl.html) card in there.
If I remember correctly that is "professional" OpenGL board.

I'm assuming that there isn't a test version of Mojo out you could
try?

The nVidia 980 XGL is a Quadro 4 XGL card. Which is a professional
graphics card. It might come with specialized graphics workstations
(which your Vaio isn't) or otherwise must be purchased (no, I don't
think it can fit in the Vaio).

My guess would be is that they just want a decent OpenGL
implementation on your graphics board and a good strong
chipset to power your system. So, yes, it *might* work on your
Viao. But if you can't test it before buying....

OpenGL is a 3D standard similar to Microsoft's DirectX and Direct3D.
Most high-end consumer boards (like the regular nVidia Geforce
models) come with OpenGL drivers. Whether or not those drivers
are professional enough is a different thing.

Let's just say that most profressional / mainstream 3D application
can work with the current OpenGL drivers / boards without any
problems.

Rob,

Thank you for a very helpful reply. The graphics board is not, to me anyway, the biggest obstacle since Mojo IS approved to run on a couple of Dell and Compaq laptops. There is also a laptop sold in the UK made especially for Mojo. I don't think the Dell laptop has an nVidia card either.

The troublesome details are more along the nature of the motherboard and 1394 ports. As I said, I've been running Avid Pro in the Vaio (and in three other towers without nVidia cards) with no problems. I understand Avid being very conservative in approving systems - after all, my Vaio is not on their list either. What bothers me is they advertize Mojo as the answer to laptop editing and then sanction only two or three laptops!

I will try to find a way to test before buying. The catch is that I believe there is some software that needs to be installed and that's not something a retailer is likely to allow.

Again, thank you. I'll let you know how it goes.

Actually some DELL laptops can be had with mobile nVidia GeForce
chips in there. I'm expecting to get my new Inspiron 9100 next
week and it also has such a video chipset in it.

Good luck with your search! Perhaps a retailer with a store can
install the product on your Vaio when you are in the store to see
if it works and then remove it after you tested it there in the store?

I also did a little search on PCI Bus Segments and the first hit
was an interesting one from AVID (http://www.avid.com/products/dna/PCIBusSegReq.shtml).

From my technical understanding of computers and that paper
it looks like normale PC's with lots of PCI slots have allocated
these slots in segments to maximize performance. The thing that
is important to AVID Mojo is that it isn't in one segment with other
high-speed stuff so that it can utilize the full bandwidth of the PCI
bus.

BUT, from reading that article on the Avid site it only seems to be
needed IF you connect to external (AVID?) storage. If you are not
going to be doing that, then it seems to be a non-issue:

" Notebook computers do not implement the bus segmentation attributes described above. All devices in notebooks typically share one bus segment. As a result, application performance associated with notebooks connected to Avid Adrenaline or Avid Mojo and also connected to external storage will vary "

One last tip. If you want to know what hardware is EXACTLY
in your Viao (including the intel (?) chipset) run this program
called EVEREST (http://www.lavalys.com/index.php?page=product&view=1) (was AIDA32). When you know that, you can
then look for more information on what your chipset does or
doesn't support. The home version I linked to is free.

Rob,

Thank you for the information. I had read the Avid article. I believe it is true of any external drive, not just Avid's. But the link to EVEREST is most helpful. That utility gave me more details about my system that Sony's own. A big help. I will continue on my serendipidous search. I'll probably end up with a Dell if I'm not careful.

Thank you.