Logic Pro 7 & earlier Logic 3 or 4 ADB or Serial dongle?

Syntho

Logician
I have an ancient Mac that will only take an ADB dongle. I also have an old Windows dongle for Logic 3 but I don't think that will work. I'm not sure if the Windows serial dongle for Logic 3 will fire up a Mac version of Logic 3, but even so I'd have to find a serial to ADB adapter. Does anyone know anything about that?

The above probably won't work so I'm looking for either a Logic 3 or a 4 ADB dongle. If anyone has an extra one, please PM me!
 
Also, weren't there multiple Dongles for old versions of Logic? One ADB dongle for Midi, and another separate dongle for Audio?
 
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I have an ancient Mac that will only take an ADB dongle.

Does your mac have a usb port? If so and if you have logic 4 install disk, you can use the XS key with it. You just have do download the Logic 4 XSKey Driver for os 9.
 
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I've got a Windows serial version of the Logic 4 Platinum dongle that I could trade someone for an ADB version. I thought it was v.3 at first, but it's definitely a v.4 Platinum.

I don't think they make a serial to ADB adapter, but I just wonder if it would be possible to solder an adapter myself and get this darn thing working... probably not though.

If anyone has an ADB dongle, please contact me.
 
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There were actually 3 ADB dongles:
- MIDI dongle
- Audio dongle
- "Kombi" dongle, which contains both.

I also have an even older one, which still has support for the Mac Plus...
 
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I'd like to get a Kombi ADB dongle, and if not, at the very least a Midi ADB Dongle. These seem nowhere to be found. I've got cash, some USB XS Keys and a 4 Platinum Windows/Serial Dongle to trade if anyone has one.

I almost want to open up my 4 Platinum Serial Dongle and resolder it to work for ADB, but I I'd probably destroy it in the process.

Do you know if a Logic 4 ADB dongle will fire up a copy of Logic 3?
 
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There were actually 3 ADB dongles:
- MIDI dongle
- Audio dongle
- "Kombi" dongle, which contains both.

I also have an even older one, which still has support for the Mac Plus...

I'm curious about the history of this. There were grey dongles and black dongles. Are the grey dongles for Logic 3 and prior, and the black ones for Logic 4?

And are you sure that the 'Kombi' dongle isn't actually a USB dongle before they got into the XS Key thing? If there actually does exist an ADB Kombi dongle, I'm curious as to when it was introduced. There are Platinum 4 midi & audio dongle sets out there for sure so I guess those came later on when 4.6 was released or something.
 
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This is the history of Emagic dongles for the Mac:

The first dongle was the "EMAGIC Notator LOGIC" one. It had a ADB and a Mac Plus connector. In later ones the Mac Plus connector was removed and the openings were filled with a plastic cap. With the arrival of audio support, a "EMAGIC Notator Logic Audio" dongle (same look, besides the sticker) was released.

Then the stickers were changed to the new Logic logo. It became the "EMAGIC Logic" dongle or "EMAGIC Logic Audio" dongle. It also removed the need for two dongles, which were shipped for a while (one for Logic, one for audio) by introducing the "combi" dongle.

After that we got "emagic Logic Audio gold", etc. dongles.

So far, all ADB only.

With the bondi-blue iMac a USB dongle was necessary. For a while the iMate ADB to USB adapter from Griffin Technology worked. Apple kept the switch to USB and the drop of ADB as a surprise for all developers, so it took a bit of time to get USB chip sets and design new dongles.

The new USB dongles had a USB connector in the center of one side, they were still black and had the same size, but the groves were thinner and 8, instead of 9. The sticker on it described the type, like "emagic Logic Audio Platinum".

With Logic 5 the XSKey was released (Patent US 2004/0128251 A1 from Jul. 1, 2004). It contained additional memory to allow for temporary demo versions and also allowed adding licenses at runtime. For Logic 5 we had the ES1 and the EXS24. As well as Macintosh or Window platform licenses.

Because the internet was not "everywhere", upgrades and registration could also be done via postcards. For that reason there were activation (12-week temporary codes for the postcard to arrive, these are the ones which were sold, they are non-XSKey specific) and authorization codes (final authorization, without an expiry, they only work with one XSKey). The last sentence is actually not 100% exact, because when Apple bought Emagic, a generic authorization code for the Mac-platform was issued, which worked with every XSKey. The platform-test was later removed from Logic, making this code no longer necessary.

The Emagic XSKeys came in 2 different colors:
- blue for full licenses (sometimes with an embedded sticker for VIP, Academic, Volume Licenses)
- orange (for NFR licenses, which are always temporary)
(plus 2 black XSKeys, which were never sold)

The serial number of the XSKey is always 15 digits and tells you the type and color. Take the last 5 digits as a decimal number and XOR them to the first 10 digits (also as a decimal number). The resulting first 10 digits are the hardware serial number, starting at 413 (below that were only used during development and used a different encryption protocol). Serial numbers below 1500 were used for beta testing only, if you have one: they are really rare ;-) The last 5 digits can be changed in software to allow recycling an XSKey (by changing the serial number all previously issued codes for the XSKey become invalid)

After Apple bought Emagic the case was changed to be more Apple-like white and more square key. They also have a different serial number range, but besides that they are completely identical on the inside.

Also a server to validate (via the XSKey Updater tool) and to register authorization codes onto the XSKey became available: http://xskey.apple.com. At the end of 2012 the server was taking offline, because maintaining it became a huge effort and only about one user per month even accessed it. New licenses haven't been issued in many years via the server. Also EES Musik http://www.ees-musik.de, which actually manufactured the XSKey (and all previous dongles), closed shop at the end of 2008, which no longer allowed Apple to even get new XSKeys.
 
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That's some good info! I'm asking particularly about the ADB dongles because something weird just happened.

I'd been looking for some Logic 4 Platinum ADB dongles and I stumbled upon a guy selling a Logic Audio 2.5 installation disk set + dongle set (a midi + separate audio dongle). I knew I wouldn't use it, I just wanted it because they're hard to get. The dongles are both black, and both say Logic with the newer logo but only one of them has the word Audio printed on it.

I don't know why, but these dongles are firing up a copy of Logic Audio 3 Platinum and Logic 4 Platinum too. I'm guessing that these dongles are actually a set of Logic 4 Platinum dongles and the guy I got them from mistook them for Logic Audio 2.5 dongles.

Surely a 2.5 dongle set can't fire up versions 3 and 4!? Needless to say, I'm a happy camper in any case.

BandaiPippinDongle.jpg


I'm wondering if these grey dongles are for Logic 3 and prior or if both Logic 3 and 4 dongles are all black.

I'm also still curious about when those Kombi ADB dongles were introduced. It takes both of my black ADB dongles to work right. Everything's pointing to these dongles I just got being Platinum 4 dongles, so I'm guessing those Kombi dongles were first introduced sometime after the first batch of Platinum 4 dongles came out. They probably switched to nothing but those around 4.6 or something.
 
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That grey dongle is not for Emagic software.

And yes, an Emagic dongle could always launch previous versions. For the old dongle it also worked the other way, that was the reason for the audio dongle. The XSKey blocked launching Logic 6 with a Logic 5 licenses. But any XSKey, even the latest sold Logic Pro 7 XSKey, contained all previous licenses. So, you could use it to launch a windows version of Logic 5 with an ES1...
 
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I read elsewhere that someone was using that exact grey dongle for Logic, so I'm guessing there was a mistake.

I'm wondering exactly which dongles I've got if the audio dongle can launch newer versions of Logic. There was an XS Key license viewer for Mac but I'm guessing there's nothing similar for ADB dongles.

The audio dongle I got in the set has GOT to be a 4 Platinum dongle though because I can enable 24 bit recording and TDM seems to be working too even though I have no Mix cards for it. There is no Platinum or Gold logo on it. Maybe I'm wrong and these are previous versions and something weird is going on.

It's working though, that's what counts.
 
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Actually, I have a correction. These are Logic 2.5 dongles now that I take a really close look. The eMagic logos on them are the old-style ones and I can tell because these have all uppercase EMAGIC characters and from 3.x on they were all in lowercase.

So the question now is, how in the hell is this booting 3.x and 4.x PLATINUM with TDM and 24bit recording support?

The USB XS Keys allowed you to put new licenses on it and those were absolutely required for newer versions and plugins, so I'm guessing that when you bought an 'upgrade' for 3, 3 platinum, and 4 platinum you didn't get a new dongle but just the software itself since the ADB dongles can launch anything. Am I right on that?
 
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