| Tuesday,
December 16, 2003
I am late getting this up although we started early. Got up early, took
Sable to the groomers for a wash. She doesn't need her toenails trimmed
since she spends a lot of her time on the concrete deck around the pool, and
on concrete sidewalks for her walk. But she does need washing, and that
takes a bigger tub than I have, and drying, which takes a lot of time.
Easier to pay someone to do all that. So we dropped off Sable and I did
errands, like banking mailing the bills and going to the Great Earth vitamin
outlet, and the market, and other stuff; got back to find that the groomers
hadn't started on her because Sable wasn't going to be washed, and they
couldn't get the muzzle on her. So we had to go down and muzzle her. She
didn't fight me over that but she sure looked betrayed... And
that got me started late. Mac Help
Wanted [THANKS TO ALL WHO responded: we have solved part
of this problem! Please read on before sending help!] Roberta's Mac reading program uses the Mac
speech synthesizer and was developed on a PowerMac. It works: but it exists
on floppy disks only. It will run on her ancient PowerBook which is pre OSX
by a lot. Neither the PowerMac nor the ancient PowerBook have USB or
FireWire ports so far as I can tell. Neither has a CD writer, although the
PowerMac has a CD reader. I need to get that program from the
PowerMac to my new PowerBook. I am guessing that connecting her system to
mine with AppleTalk won't be too hard, although exactly what port we use --
what the physical connection will be -- I don't know, and I'd appreciate
advice on that. She finds that a program called SimpleTalk
while present on the PowerMac no longer works; it seems to be corrupted and
we don't know how to replace it. I don't know enough about Macs to figure it
out. I presume that at worst I can find it on line somewhere, download to
Ariadne the new OS-X 15" PowerBook, use that to burn a CD, and read the CD
in her PowerMac; but we are hoping there is an easier way. The PowerMac has
never been on line: it's older than the Internet. Perhaps there is a way for
it to go on line but it has no Ethernet port that we know of, so that's not
too likely. I probably need to spend more time seeing just
what assets the PowerMac has; but if anyone knows a simple way to get an
ancient PowerMac talking to a modern 15" OS-X 10.3.1 PowerBook, I would
greatly appreciate the time saving. I can probably manage to figure it out,
but that is going to take time I don't have.
So we have these problems:
-
Getting the reading program from floppies or from the
ancient PowerMac to the new PowerBook.
-
Finding a copy of SimpleTalk and getting it onto the
PowerMac
-
Getting her reading program to run on the new PowerBook;
since Agnes, the required voice, runs on Agnes, I presume this isn't
impossible.
All help appreciated.
[We will use either a USB floppy drive connected to the
PowerBook or we will use MacDrive on a PC and transfer the files from PC to
Mac. So the transfer problem is solved.}
[We have several offers of the older OS that is on her
PowerMac, including fro Garry Utter who will simple send a copy on CD, so
that problem also is solved. I'll probably try downloading from the net onto
Ariadne, burning a CD, and installing on the PowerMac just to see if I can
do it, but it's a solved problem in any event. That should restore
SimpleTalk.]
I have GOT to get to work on the last scene in Burning
Tower. Mac Volume Broken? No CD I put
into the Mac puts out enough volume to make it the right way to listen to it
or to watch a movie. Yes, I have gone to system preferences,
and put the volume slider on the Menu Bar, and pushed that all the way to
loud. Yes, I have used the DVD Player volume control and put that all
the way up. Yes, I have used the volume controls on the Sharp 17" flat
screen with built in speakers and put that up all the way.
The problem is the same with the native sound from Ariadne and also when I
plug the Sharp builtin amplified speakers into the phones outlet of the
PowerBook G4 15", which does NOT HAVE a "line out" port unlike some laptops.
And no, I can't hear The Two Towers from about 6 feet away, not comfortably.
The dialogue isn't really intelligible unless I sit closer. I
suppose I can feed the output into the Sennheiser RS65 SurroundSound Radio earphones. And in
fact that works and there is enough volume, and those phones are great.
And I suppose I can find a pre-amp to go between the speakers and the Mac,
but it seems odd
that we need it. Does anyone know a good simple broad band pre-amp that will
take the earphone output of a PowerBook and boost it before putting it into
the speakers on a Sharp 17" flatscreen?
======================= And now it is time to go get Sable.
With the Sennheiser wireless earphones the Mac does very nicely indeed for
sound, although at full volume it is still not as loud as I would expect.
Is this worth sending back to Apple to have fixed? I presume
given that I bought that Applecare policy I can wait until next month to do
that if I have to. =================
On Macs, Peter G says I
meant to add to my previous message, btw, that just reinstalling the most
advanced compatible Mac OS on the old Power Mac will put SimpleTalk back on
it. If that isn't practical, you can probably get one of your local Mac
helpers to install SimpleTalk alone from a floppy or CD copy of the same
version of Mac OS.
What we have is a PowerMac. It reads both floppies and
CD's. We are unlikely to have any copies of any OS for it, although that
isn't impossible. Can one buy one of the old OS's for the older PowerMac? I
am sure we never put OS-X on it, but beyond that I'm not sure; I can go
check. [This is no longer a question. The OS is available
free from Apple.} It's a pity there's no way to use Appletalk to connect
the two machines, my new PowerBook and the old PowerMac; or if there is I
don't know about it. Are there adapters that let me connect to USB on the
one hand and whatever the PowerMac used for communications on the other? I
mean surely Apple has SOME way to communicate with its older stuff?
================= Hallelujah! I have checked the floppies
Roberta ships and they are "HD" meaning that If you in
fact have 1.44MB floppies, here's a good program for reading those disks in
a PC:
http://www.macdrive.com/
------- Roland Dobbins
ought to work. In addition I have ordered for about $40 a
USB floppy drive (I may already have one, it works on the PC, but I am not
sure of its ability to work with Apple formats; another thing to try so you
don't have to). One way or another we will get the programs transferred.
On the Sound Output front: The PowerBook only has
analog audio output so far as I know, although I am willing to be corrected.
The audio comes out the headphones jack; there is no Line Out. If there is
another way to get sound out of the PowerBook I do now know it.
[Digital sound output is in the USB; the proper equipment can turn that
into sound for speakers. I'm getting something that will do that.]
The audio in the PowerBook speakers is too low for me to use for movies. It
might be all right for most, but in my case I have to sit very close to the
system in order to understand the dialog, and the music and special effects
are audible but not very dramatic. This is improved by taking
the output and feeding it to a Sharp 17" flat panel monitor with built-in
speakers and amplifier -- I presume amplifier since there is a volume
control -- but at maximum volume it is still not loud enough for me. That's
with the Mac system preferences volume at max; the DVD Player volume at max;
and the Sharp volume at max. It ain't enough to listen to unless you are
close to the system, although it's better with the Sharp than without. With
the Sennheiser RS65 phones it's fine. Apple seems to sell a
series of amplifiers and powered speakers, all at premium prices, that will
make all this better. I am also about to experiment with other power speaker
systems just to see what will happen. The PowerBook output is probably good
enough for a single person listening to a movie on an airplane where the
listener is close to the system; and of course would work with headphones in
any case. Unlike PC systems, the sound output of the
PowerBook is inadequate without further equipment or amplification. This is
surprising given the cost of the PowerBook. I hasten to add that I need
louder sound than many people, and have for 50 years. ==================================
More communications possibilities: there appears to be Ethernet software on
the PowerMac and in the systems folder there seems to be "Ethertalk". Alas
there is no Ethernet cable outlet on her PowerMac. She says
it isn't older than the Internet we just were never able to use it properly
with the Internet. Anyway, I should be getting the means to
transfer the files from her old PowerMac to the PowerBook. I
still need to find a way to restore SimpleTalk to working on her machine.
And probably it wouldn't hurt to find the OS version she has and reinstall
that. She has OS version 7.5.3 on the PowerMac. SimpleTalk is
hosed. If I had a copy of 7.5.3 I could reinstall on her PowerMac it might
get that back. Meanwhile in a couple of days we will have a USB floppy
drive. This problem is also solved;
see mail.
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