Tech: Little Mac Corner

Subject: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 21 Dec 07 - 06:39 PM

Appropriate Technology.

With all of the technological advances in computers lately, it can be a real relief to simply find an older computer that does just what you want it to do... and call it good. And because the parts are cheap and available... experimentation becomes fun again!

And thus...

I've been having SO much fun with my old iMacs! Last summer... to the veritable tidal wave of knowing disapproval and condescension of my local community... I purchased a 333Mhz G3 iMac at the local yearly rummage sale for 40 bucks. Really... I got more support from my friends as a small child... stomping on caterpillers all afternoon...

So, after messing around with the older 'system 8.5' for a few hours, I quickly realized that I really wanted more from my 'new' toy... so... after finding that this model isn't really DVD upgradable, I took the thing apart using an easily retrieved 'googlette' (quickly downloaded instructions), and I removed the hard drive.

Taking the hard drive over to my faithful old dust covered Blue and White and replacing it's HD with the one from the iMac, I loaded the OSX 10.4.6 disk into the Blue and White's DVD rom and replaced the 1998 operating system with last year's "state of the art". After a very stimulating hour or so (don' you just love to watch your computer download huge programs?), the installation was complete, and I lost no time placing the HD back into the iMac... and I turned it on.

It started up fine... but was REALLY slow... so I upgraded the Memory (RAM) by ten-fold... from 32Mb to 384Mb... and started up again... and PRESTO!.. it went from REALLY slow, to sluggish... but... aside from heavy loads like Videos and Photoshop... it surfs online at DSL speed without a glitch.

Yeah, so?...

Well, the newer system is WAY better... you pretty much have to -try- to get the iMac to crash... but the new programs are so much better... you'll have better things to do.

Well, to make a long story short, my mission was increasingly clear to me. I already knew that G3s do music recording quite well... My 'Blue and White' PPC works great with the BETA version of Audacity (a free audio editor/multitrack studio)... and so... off into the world of virtual studios and and VST/Audio units I dove.

What I finally found surprised me! The iMac was just a little too slow to do all I wanted... but it could do quite a lot of it! What I was after, was a complete "all in one" signal processor and recording studio... and it needed to be rather small... but not nano... Portable and affordable appropriate technology.

So... I picked up a 600Mhz G3 iMac with 500Mb of RAM at the recycler for less than 100 bucks without a hard drive, and put the one into it that I had done all the work on already... and it worked great. Even small video!

At this point... I found myself wondering about WiFi... and since the iMac is rather portable... well... I just couldn't resist. After calling around for an 'airport' card I soon realized that we were talking about an antique... and It's cost had doubled in the last year because 'they don't make them any more'. So... it came down to a USB wireless interface adapter. Best Buy... 60 bucks... works great... downloads very fast at most offices, coffee shops, and libraries.

Anyway... back to the point... unbeknownst to me, System 10.4 (Tiger) comes with a basic audio unit 'host' that doesn't download with the 'basic install'... and since most of us aren't programers, we probably don't install the programing tools... and I didn't, cause I don't know the first thing about computer programming. So... out of the computer came the hard drive again... and I loaded it with the 'Core Audio' program "AU Lab".

There are lots of free Audio Units available online...

It works!

I can play through it as a signal processor in real time if I allow 'playthrough' to occur. this covers the latency (the tiny but otherwise noticeable lag between playing the note, and hearing it).

I'll update this thread periodically.

ttr

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Rowan
Date: 21 Dec 07 - 07:56 PM

Have fun, Thomas.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Andrez
Date: 22 Dec 07 - 01:59 AM

I was planning to use my G4 powerbook for some recording activities early next year. The tip off about installing the Core Audio is really useful. Thanks for that Thomas.

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:07 PM

Yep, it works.

And it's cute and portable.

The sound inputs and outputs are the standard 1/8th inch... easily adaptable to most any home stereo... and it's a twenty dollar endeavor to send from the 'little mac' to any FM radio nearby... with one of those little transmitters that people usually connect their iPod to their car stereo with.

The background noise is surprisingly low... after you've messed around with levels and various AUs. Some AUs just make a lot of noise, and some don't... and yes, it is possible to add too many... so go easy...

The 31 band graphic equalizer that comes with the AU lab (apple) really makes for exquisite fine tuning of your sound, and of complimenting the stereo-radio system you are playing through.

An interesting quirk in the "Audio MIDI Setup" makes a lot of difference in the sound... when you start a new session, open up the Audio MIDI Setup in the applications 'utilities', and move one of the input levels a hair. The overall input of the system will immediately jump by half. This is good to know. After getting the hang of 'the levels thing' your in home "little Mac" studio will capture your muse, and play it back for you for future editing.

When you use the "little Mac" as a signal processor, it's easy to record what you are playing, anytime. One mouse click starts... one mouse click stops... a pretty darn good AIFF quicktime recording... which can be burned, converted to MP3, or inserted into the virtual multitrack of your choice, or made into a music CD.

Do I secretly dream of owning a Mac Pro 3.2 Ghz?   Well uhh... yeah... but I don't need it for sound... I want it for Video, Photoshop, (do I hear... Movieshop?), and high-end productions of all kinds...

But for simple recordings with a smorgasbord of play-through effects that would cost thousands in a music store, this is a wonderful portable solution. Heck... the VGA screen is small by todays standards... but it's just the right size to view across your playing area, has an amazing array of brightness potentials with all of the 'dimming' programs available, can be nudged to a mini light show type of 'screensaver'... and with a USB extension, you can put your mouse on a table or a stool right next to you.

Next stop... Foot controls!

Cheerio!
Until next time,
ttr

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:13 PM

I have a 'Mac Classic' -- the teenager who disassembled it assured me that 'it WAS working'... ask JIK about the teenager habits of 'undocumented problem solving techniques that tends to leave things incapable of further simple maintainence '.... if anybody local wants to trade me something for the box of parts... I'll consider it.... or will help me put it back together (it's not on the top of the 'To Do' list)...

:-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: elfcape
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 08:48 PM

and I thought the Performa 630 downstairs in the laundry room was old. A Mac Classic! Wow.

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 08:59 PM

What's the last non OS/X mac? Not I've anything against OS/X just it's sort of UNIX as is Linux that I like I'd maybe some day like to play with one of the older Mac systems - just a curiosity thing really...

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:16 PM

I still use my 1999 iMac version 8.6 for all my
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop design work.
I'll keep it forever!

Alice

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:22 PM

Some of he Power chipset Macs made the migration through 8.xx to 9.xx to 10.0 and even, I believe to 10.4. I do not believe any of the 68xxx chip machines made it past OS 8. And certainly not to OSX. But the first few editions of Mac OS X came with a second environment called Classic which could run applications from earlier days. Regardless, I doubt a Performa could manage it -- the chip was too slow -- aand the early 68000x series were even slower (Classic, Lisa, Mac II)


A

Subject: RE: Tech: Little Mac Corner
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:34 PM

Jon:

Out of curiousity, you co uld play with any Mac OS up to and including 9.x on any Performa, the Mac II and IIc series, and even the older Classic. But it is a very clunky operating system if you drive it hard at all. There was no RAM segementation for application heaps, and if one app ran over its allocated RAM, it would crash the whole system. There was no threading as we know it in Linux, so one app could lose all your work in several apps at once.

Even with these drawbacks, it was well-loved in the days when slow computers still saved all kinds of time. It just couldn't keep up with the exponential increase in memory requirements and simultaneous processes.

My wife, the Mac expert, says the earliest Mac that could run OSX was a beige G3 of November 1997, but barely. People later did well with a 512 Meg 300 MHz G3 (probably one of the blue ones). Video cards and RAM available made a big difference. I run it quite happily on a dual-processor PPC G5 with 2.5GB of RAM -- with two x 2GHz processors and a 1GHz bus, 127MB of VRAM driving an Apple Cinema HD display. I am seriously spoiled. :D



A