EARLIER FEATURES
FEATURES CONTENTS
LATER FEATURES
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14th February 2002 |
KEN OUT AND ABOUT ... AND INDOORS AGAIN |
Ken Ross |
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For various reasons I've been remote from base so the rewrite of the
Icon article is on my list of things to do :-<
A
while ago I came across a site with card models of Macs to print
out & make . To complement them I've now got a matching cut out doll
of Steve Jobs to stand next to them ( when back at base ) from the December
2001 issue of Macaddict from the USA .
The first port of call for 68K users is www.jagshouse.com
to find various items such as DeskPict V1.1 ( freeware ) that
will put a single picture onto your desktop instead of the System 7 tiling
( pretend you've got OS8 ! ) .
M-M
was at a bargain price due to being mains only ( my mobile computing
is restricted to places I can plug in ) as the battery pack seems to be
dead . The Ni Cad battery pack after a bit of experimenting will
hold some charge - enough to get start up chimes and a few secs of screen
light so all being well some deep discharging / recharging cycles might
restore it back to health . For those amongst us who've got powerbooks
that have short battery life ( but longer than mine !) 'Battery Amnesia'
from www.kezer.net
should recondition it .
With limited RAM it's best to prune the system folder
if possible
, one item that is top of my list is PC exchange ( control panel &
extension ) to be replaced with the earlier Apple File Exchange
application
as it dosn't add to the RAM used by the system . This needs to be started
before shoving a PC floppy into the Mac's drive to get access to the floppy
via a simple contents listing without mounting onto desktop , PC Exchange
will mount it on the desktop using default icons. A disk that formats
to 720K on the PC is formatted to 800K on the Mac , this is done by altering
the disk RPM as the head moves across the disk thus getting sectors of
the same size and the data for doing so is held in a look up table
and this is what the Exchange(s) temporarily modify .
To get at the innards of a PB there are a few 'Torx-10 ' headed screws on the underside of the casing and a single 'Torx-8" on the back panel which need the right tool to undo and if the screws get damaged it can be quite awkward . Torx drivers can be found in Maplins or any good car accessory store ( even indeed Halfords ! ) , the car shop ones are intended to be used with socket sets but they can be used on the laptop just by themselves with no problems . Last year I picked up a cheapo ( from a pound shop ) rachet screwdriver set and it turns out that there was the correct sized Torx drivers in the box , which for a 'hope-I-don't-have-to' tool is good value .
Most PowerBooks use a variety of SCSI port called 'HDI-30' ( a square beastie on the back panel ) so it requires buying one of them before I can use it with any SCSI chain as in the 'powerbook control panel' in the system folder there's an option to alter the HD's SCSI number it seems . A cheaper option is to set up an 'AppleTalk' network - just unplug the printer cable then shove it into the PowerBook , ditto with a control panel into the pair of Macs system folders . Then either machine can access the hard drive of the other with it appearing on the desktop of the other . A good article about it can be found at www.visio n.net.au/~apaterson/computer/mac_networking.htm After linking things up tween the PPC 7300 running OS8.6 and the PB160
using Sys7.1 for some reason I couldn't get the PPC to mount the laptop
( may've done something out of sequence but didn't have time to investigate
further as will be revealed ! ) but the PB160 was happy to mount the PPC
7300's hard drive and the ( ex IIci replacement but now ) external hard
drive . Getting a Zip cartridge to mount after insertion required a restart
of the PB160 ( ditto for CD's ) . The speed of the AppleTalk link wasn't
great - but it's cheap ! . After backing up the laptop hard drive to a
Zip cartridge through the network it was then burnt onto CD - just
in case . When the PB160 was in charge of the network the Zip cartridge
couldn't be ejected / renamed until AppleTalk was inactive .
On the 7300 the choice of port for AppleTalk was tween
modem &
printer port but on the PowerBook it refused to consider anything other
than the ( now missing ) printer port ( for various quirky reasons ) so
looking at the Comms option in Clarisworks there was a direct method available
on both machines in the form of a terminal prg . Plugging the 7300's
printer cable into the PowerBook's modem port and choosing the Mac's serial
tool option in the settings menu and which ports to use , then from the
session menu I could transfer files to & fro ( albeit slowly by comparison
with SCSI and even AppleTalk ) that wouldn't fit onto a floppy -
tell one machine to receive file and the other to send it , just like dealing
with a BBS via a terminal prg with the settings file saved as 'house ftp'
on each desktop .
French & German keyboards for example have slightly
different key
layouts and on the Mac it's just a matter of clicking on the options in
the 'keyboard' control panel ( or the ' Frappe clavier Tableaux de
bord ' as I say now ) to choose the English layout for use .
Some System messages are in French but for a dedicated Mac user this is
only a minor matter .
At times you may see an advert for a 'Duo' laptop , this
beastie was
not called 'Duo' for nothing , a two part concept in which the SCSI ports
and so on were on a docking station to be left behind at the office (etc
) leaving a stripped down laptop to be taken out on the road . There were
two type of docking station , the desk mounted type that the closed Duo
slid into a flap on the front and made it's connections with the external
monitor , keyboard & disk drive that were plugged into the docking
station . The portable docking station contained all the parts needed to
make it behave like an ordinary laptop except the disk drive ( two travel
bags - one for the computer , other for docking station etc !) . I think
that it was intended to aim at the 'travelling salesman' type - able to
show presentations etc on the road then do all printout of orders etc back
in the office .
SoundApp ( freeware. ) by Norman Franke can deal with ( almost ) any sound format that can be found , on 68K machines it can even convert MP3 files ( which need a PPC for playback ) into formats that can be used on 68K's . The only format that it can't deal with is 'Real Audio' ( .ra , .rm , .ram filetypes ) and as luck had it I had to deal with some of those files recently . Searching for a converter prg for the Mac drew a blank but then thinking different ( Chuck Jones lightbulb ! ) came up with - connect the audio input to the audio output . Then just playback and record at same time . For domestic reasons I'd made a switched adaptor to choose tween my
headphones and the external speakers so i just unplugged the headphones
and inserted the input plug . Then firing up the 'Real Audio' prg and 'Quick
Recorder' at same time I fiddled around to get the right settings . When
I'd finished the batch I then realised that I'd been listening to them
through the external speakers which meant that the headphone socket was
switched out with no signal . Yes the files had been recorded and I did
burn them onto CD , after much scribbling on paper the conclusion was reached
that somehow connecting the ground line on line out & in
did the trick somehow - at least on my Mac!.
In the
course of my travels just prior to xmas I glanced into a electronic
games shop and saw that they were flogging new Atari Lynx games machines
for £30 . The box promised all sorts of exciting peripherals for
it , and the boxes looked fresh as when they'd been stored away in a warehouse
around 5 years ago at least (?) about when the Sabrina comic strip made
a joke about them in Amiga Format . In the new year in the sale the last
few were knocked down to £10 , they must've picked the stock up for
bobbins . I just wonder how many people were mislead by the brightly coloured
printing ? , the shop didn't have any other cartridges for the Lynx other
than the one included in the box and so this ping pong machine will will
end up in the charity shops & boot fairs in very short order no doubt
.
Intensive care has several modes within the unit ,
isolation , general
and HDU .
A
minor alt comedian turned up in ICU general for a few days ( self
inflicted health related ) before transfer into HDU , he'd tried the
"d'you-know-who-I-am?"
biz on the ambulance crew who picked him up which didn't impress them then
he tried the routine on a nurse from Johanesburg and it totaly failed .
This guy had a sleep mask that straight away made me think of 50's USA
sitcoms - listen mate it's far too late to worry about bags under the eyes
. With the aid of his girlfriend he started to write something " don't
worry if it's not that good it'll impress them with it being written
in ICU " . As he was wheeled away I could hear saying that
he felt the walls were closing in on him . Yes they were as every time
you put that mask on the partitions & monitor did - revenge for that
constant trying to eat and reverting .
The ward kitchen microwave broken ? - this sounds like a job for Cap'n Commodore !, ( Hmmm - how can I distract them ? ) - Look over there !!!! . |
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