Old digi equipment is cheap[1], usually in great shape, and sounds the same as the day it was new and better than any sub$800 USB2 interface. Previous versions

Old digi equipment is cheap[1], usually in great shape, and sounds the same as the day it was new and better than any sub$800 USB2 interface. Previous versions of Pro Tools can be matched to the old equipment and downloaded right off digi's site.[2] But there are 2 difficulties, knowing what card goes with what interface in what old computer on what OS version, and licensing. But at some previous version, everything is cracked, or one can purchase old licensing with the hardware. I'd estimate for time researching, $500 of equipment including the old computer, as much hacking it to work as Gentoo alone would require, one could reasonably easily have 16 or 32 channels of old Pro Tools and never see latency problems from stacking effects on every channel, even on something like an 800MHz G4 or 2GHz Core2Duo. Issue is, it will sound like Pro Tools from whatever era it's from, which was never bad, just distinctive, and most wouldn't even notice. Software's just not going to solve crappy hardware. [1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+192+i%2Fo&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=digidesign+192 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+19... [2] http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm