I posted a picture earlier today of a Mac that had crashed during an install DVD boot.  The machine was slated to get wiped, reloaded, and set up as a Pro Tools rig for the Main Auditorium.  Not thinking much of it, I went ahead and cleaned the machine without doing an reinstall of OS X.  I installed our audio hardware and Pro Tools on top of it, and loaded a couple sessions to test things out.  So far everything seemed to be working real well, and since I was playing drums for the rig’s first time on stage, I’d be able to further test the unit first-hand.

I carted the new rig over to the Warehouse (our Jr./Sr. High environment) and hooked it up.  It tested just fine.  However, once we started warm-up, things turned ugly.  The G5 mac locked up almost instantly when we began playing a Pro Tools-aided song.  I rebooted the machine, played the session back to make sure it was ok, and strangely, it was just fine.  However, when we went to actually play along to Pro Tools the machine crashed again.  What was WEIRD is that the mac would only seemed to crash while we were playing our instruments.

After a few more minutes of "experimentation," it became strangely apparent that the crashing was being caused by my snare drum.  Now before you write this off as "the IT guy is on weed" or something, consider the process we took to get here.

• We ran the PT track with no band, and machine did not crash.
• We ran the PT track with everyone in the band except me for a few measures.  As soon as I began to play the snare drum, the computer seized up.
• We ran the PT track again, this time with the band, and every drum on my kit except the snare.  The machine ran just fine until I started hitting my snare, after which the machine locked up again.

As it turns out, we ended up playing the worship set without and back-up tracks, and it was still good.  The whole situation is just weird though.  I know there’s an underlying cause for the crashing (why else would an OS X install DVD not boot?), but being able to trigger it with the snare drum?  That’s just goofy, and honestly, I don’t even know where to start with this one.

More on this weirdness as the situation unfolds.