When Apple get it right...
Aug. 15th, 2003 09:56 pm... boy do they get it right.
I've been rebuilding the two main machines here today.
The one I'm typing this on is a Beige G3, running OS 10.2.6 with a whole barrowload of RAM - basically it's my work and life machine. The thing it was missing was USB support, so I whipped the USB card out of a spare Performa 6400 (leaving the obligatory blood sacrifice on the case as I did) and popped it in. System Profiler finds it straight away. "Ok", thinks I, "lets hang the Bluetooth card off it and see what happens". Plug in Belkin USB Bluetooth adaptor into one port, and the Handspring sync cradle into the other. Fire up Bluetooth Setup Assistant, turn the Bluetooth on the phone on, and hey presto - it finds 'Mike's T610'. Fire up Hot Sync Manager to tell iSync I have a Palm, hit 'Sync' in iSync, and the sync button on the Palm cradle, and ... bingo. Phone, Address Book and Palm all synchronised. Brilliant.
Meanwhile, on the studio Mac, a big G4 running OS 9, it's time to upgrade sound cards. Out with the old (no support under OS X for when we upgrade) Sonorus StudI/O (16 channels of ADAT in and out, of which we can only use 8 in/2 out 'cause we only have one 8 channel A-to-D converter). And in with the new, a Mark Of The Unicorn 2408mkII plus the PCI324 card that goes in the Mac itself. (Blood sacrifice be dammed: 700 quid of PCI card means I buy and USE an antistatic wrist strap for this one!) While I have the lid off, in goes an extra 75GB HD and a second video card.
Power up, install the new drivers for the sound and video cards. Reboot.
Ohhhhh boy :). Now I have a potentially 24 in/out system (currently running 18 (8 analog direct, 8 analog via ADAT, 2 analog via the DAT machine) in, 8 out), which will, if needed, talk to a full 24 tracks of ADAT or Tascam DA88 (hi Keris). It talks to two 17" SVGA monitors, side by side, for a nice LARGE amount of screen real estate, and has 100G+ of disk available to it. Next time I get the bits box out, it'll have 1GB of RAM, too.
Life is good.
I've been rebuilding the two main machines here today.
The one I'm typing this on is a Beige G3, running OS 10.2.6 with a whole barrowload of RAM - basically it's my work and life machine. The thing it was missing was USB support, so I whipped the USB card out of a spare Performa 6400 (leaving the obligatory blood sacrifice on the case as I did) and popped it in. System Profiler finds it straight away. "Ok", thinks I, "lets hang the Bluetooth card off it and see what happens". Plug in Belkin USB Bluetooth adaptor into one port, and the Handspring sync cradle into the other. Fire up Bluetooth Setup Assistant, turn the Bluetooth on the phone on, and hey presto - it finds 'Mike's T610'. Fire up Hot Sync Manager to tell iSync I have a Palm, hit 'Sync' in iSync, and the sync button on the Palm cradle, and ... bingo. Phone, Address Book and Palm all synchronised. Brilliant.
Meanwhile, on the studio Mac, a big G4 running OS 9, it's time to upgrade sound cards. Out with the old (no support under OS X for when we upgrade) Sonorus StudI/O (16 channels of ADAT in and out, of which we can only use 8 in/2 out 'cause we only have one 8 channel A-to-D converter). And in with the new, a Mark Of The Unicorn 2408mkII plus the PCI324 card that goes in the Mac itself. (Blood sacrifice be dammed: 700 quid of PCI card means I buy and USE an antistatic wrist strap for this one!) While I have the lid off, in goes an extra 75GB HD and a second video card.
Power up, install the new drivers for the sound and video cards. Reboot.
Ohhhhh boy :). Now I have a potentially 24 in/out system (currently running 18 (8 analog direct, 8 analog via ADAT, 2 analog via the DAT machine) in, 8 out), which will, if needed, talk to a full 24 tracks of ADAT or Tascam DA88 (hi Keris). It talks to two 17" SVGA monitors, side by side, for a nice LARGE amount of screen real estate, and has 100G+ of disk available to it. Next time I get the bits box out, it'll have 1GB of RAM, too.
Life is good.