Digitizing Video
From Dave Garton:
I read your recent mailbag page
about VHS to DVD.
I've tried some conversions myself, having used a standalone Pioneer
DVR as well as a Datavideo DAC-100 analog-to-DV bridge.
http://www.datavideo.us/products/dac_100_main_page.htm
http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards/datavideo-dac-100/203
Here is a bookmark I've saved with loads of input, it might add to
your arsenal of information, or serve to further confuse you. I hope
it's the former!
http://www.macintouch.com/digitizingvideo.html
What I've come to realize is that a Time Base Corrector is essential
for good capture from weak sources. Some standalones have it built in,
while other high-end VCRs have it as a feature. Full-frame is the most
desired, as I understand it. There are also half-frame TBCs.
Hope this gives you some more information to pass on, and hopefully
use.
Dave
Dave,
Thanks for the info. I'll be sharing it in the
mailbag.
Dan
Making DVDs from Videotape with Sony's VRD-VC
Series
From Mark McCormack:
I second/third/fourth using the Sony VRD-VCxx for
basic video copying; I've been using one for years. If you need to do
any editing or want fancy DVD menus, you obviously need to go the Mac
iMovie/iDVD route (or Toast), which I've done many times for personal
videos. Note that the Sony can burn continuously to dual-layer
DVD, an extremely valuable trick which no other unit on the market
could do at the time I purchased mine. Obviously this means that you
can record nearly 2 hours continuously at the highest quality. I assume
this means that the unit has several GB of internal flash-memory for
buffering to accomplish this sophisticated trick. The only downside to
it is that you have to hover over it to hit the Stop button when the
source finishes. It has a small LCD display that shows the video as it
runs, as well as the elapsed time.
The Sony senses copy-protection in the source and will refuse to
continue. I discovered that if I routed copy-protected source video
through my Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge to the Sony via its FireWire
input, it just "happened" to bypass this problem, most of the time.
Mark in Seattle
Mark,
Thanks for weighing in. I'm hoping to avoid spending
any more money on this project, but I'll keep it in mind.
Dan
Leasing Computers Makes No Sense for Schools
From Björn Steiner:
John [Hatchett] was asking:
"The biggest questions that should be answered is why are school
systems buying computers? Most businesses lease equipment."
The reason businesses lease equipment is mostly due to accounting.
If equipment is bought, it is financially asset and there are some
pretty strict depreciation rules with long term bindings, which can
ruin your financial statement or share holder value. If equipment is
leased, the use of it is not asset but consumables on costs.
As long as schools not even work on common business mechanics for
their own business needs, there will be no change.
best,
Björn
Björn,
Thanks for writing. I don't think schools are overly
concerned about depreciation and book value on their old computer
inventory. I suspect it's just an argument for doing nothing, as it's
cheaper to keep these old machines in storage than pay to have them
recycled or take the time to prepare them so they can be given away or
sold cheaply.
Dan
Dealing with Unpaid Rebates
From Steven Hunter:
Mr. Cook would do well to first address his complaints to the manufacturer, but he
should follow that up with a call to the Federal Trade Commission, his
state's Attorney General's offce, the Attorney General's office of the
state where the manufacturer does business, and
the Better Business Bureau.
For more info, see
Rebates: Where to Complain.
- Steven Hunter
Steven,
Thanks for the info. I'll post it in the mailbag and
forward it to Scott Cook.
Dan
What of Low End Mac Gaming?
From Bryce Wilson:
Hi-
Sure enjoy reading your site, thought of an article idea, or maybe
already written?
After reading about Bungie and Microsoft parting ways, I was
thinking how fun it would be to scap around for an onld OS 8 or 9 based
Mac as a classic game system.
But I have no idea which models would be a good choice or even where
to find the games...
- Bryce @ Home
Bryce,
Back in 2000/01, we had a Low End
Mac Gaming column written by Brian Rumsey. It covered 68030, 68040,
and early PowerPC Macs. Nobody has taken up the mantle since, although
it's a topic I'd like to see us cover here at Low End Mac.
Dan
UMPCs a Threat to Apple?
From Travis Jay Patocka:
Dan,
I don't know if you have been looking at some of the UMPCs [Ultra-Mobile
PCs] that are out there, but ASUS will be releasing it own kind of
ultra-portable called the eeePC 701 within the
next month or so. Supposedly this computer runs its own version of
Linux and will start at $199 (in a very basic form); for around
$250-$350 you get a machine that comes with 1 GB of RAM, at least
a 4 GB hard drive (flash memory), Open Office and other
applications, and WiFi. I see this machine as that third computer that
Apple should have released long ago: Something that is cheap enough and
small enough that you can easily leave that desktop and laptop behind
and instead take this with you on the road. I'm not trying to be an
ASUS fan-boy, but the idea of this machine and its potential and
bargain price will make me a buyer. Any chance we could load 10.5 on
this machine? I believe that it comes with a 900 MHz Intel processor.
Thanks!
- Travis
Travis,
I was in Sam's Club over the weekend and very
impressed with some of the smaller Windows notebooks, probably 10"
screens (I didn't look too close). I'd just love to have a notebook
computer that small, especially one that could convert into a tablet
and have multitouch features like the iPhone and iPod touch. I really
want something I can use in the field as a handheld, and regular
laptops just don't cut it there - and the iPhone/iPod touch screens are
awfully small for real work.
As for the ASUS eeePC 701, it specifies "Intel mobile
CPU & chipset" but doesn't give any more details. Is this a Core
Solo? Core 2 Duo? Something older? How fast does it run?
Since it can run Windows XP, it should be possible to
hack an OS X installation on it. How well it will run is something
I couldn't even guess at.
Dan
Dan, here are the states that I got from eeeuser.com, which got the
information from a Russian website who tested an eeePC model 701. It is
a mix of Russian and English, sorry about that.
- Travis
[Editor's note: We've removed the Russian.]
- Processor: Intel Celeron M ULV 900 MHz, 256 MB of L2 cache, 400 MHz
FSB
- Operating system: Linux
- Logic System: Intel NG82910GMLE/NH82801FBM
- Memory: 512 MB DDR2 400 MHz
- LCD Display: 7" widescreen, 800 x 480
- Graphics and video: integrated Intel 910GMLE Express
- HDD: 4 GB flash
- Optical drive: none
- Communications: 10/100 ethernet, 56K modem, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
- Dimensions, mm: 225 x 165 x 21 ~ 35
- Weight, kg: 0.89
Travis,
Thanks for the info. My research says this is pretty
low tech stuff. The single-core CPU came out in January 2004, and 900
MHz is poky by Wintel standards. I doubt it will be a decent Linux
computer. (I just parted with a 1.4 GHz Celeron M notebook, and I found
it unacceptably slow with both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. My old 400
MHz PowerBook G4 was a lot more responsive. Time to work with
virtualization on the MacBook Pro....)
Dan
Death of the Palm Foleo
From Steve Geary:
Hello Dan,
Again, I really do enjoy Low End Mac. Thanks for such a wonderful
website!
In reading the most recent "The 'Book Review" - just, who does this
"James R. Stoup" think he
is?
Back on May 31, when you mentioned that Palm was going to release
their Foleo UMPC, the more I read
about it, the more interested I became. Many times I find I need a
small, extremely portable computer to do menial tasks. Rather than drag
a laptop around, I could buy a PDA, but I would like a regular keyboard
and more screen real-estate.
I own a Compaq
Aero-8000, which was exactly that in terms of 1999, but it is
extremely limited in what it can do in this day and age. I had
difficulty getting it to work with a 10Base-T ethernet card, let alone
get an 802.11b card to work. Windows CE is so . . . Windows.
It is full of bugs and stupid quirks as well as Pocket Internet
Explorer 3.01, which is terribly out of date.
What I want to do is:
- check email and browse the Web, either by wifi or through a cell
phone connection (Bluetooth or USB)
- read PDF documents
- read, create and edit text files, spreadsheet files (Word, Excel or
plain text)
- edit HTML files
- view images
- possibly resize/edit images.
- upload files to a website
- download images off a camera
and other small tasks.
But Palm has scrapped the Foleo just as it was ready to ship! After
all the development costs and production (I'm sure they had an
inventory ready to ship), it's scrapped. I worry that Palm won't be
around much longer with that kind of waste.
So I've been looking at possibly an Asus Eee PC, but if
Apple would introduce something similar, I would be right there
ordering it! I'm sure there are many others who would want such a
device!
8-10" 1024 x 600 screen, normal keyboard (even if its slightly
reduced in size), no optical drive, and enough power to do such simple
tasks.
Asus' Eee PC as well as Via's Nanobook 7" screens are nice, but 800
x 480 is a bit cramped, but useable. I've seen Sony's UMPC with a 4.5"
screen at 1024 x 600, and it was quite sharp and readable.
I suppose I'm one of those "non existent" people who wants a Macbook
Mini.
- Steve
Steve,
You and thousands of others! Today's high resolution
(high pixel density) LCDs make it practical to have a 10" 1152 x 768
display, which was wonderful on the first- and second-generation
TiBooks. Let's call it 8.4" wide, 5.6" high, 135-140 pixels per inch
(the iPod nano is 204 ppi!), LCD backlit for longer battery life.
You could have a decent keyboard, about 90% of usual.
Make an optical drive a strap-on option for those who want to watch
DVDs in the field or rip their CD collection into iTunes. Give it a
flash drive instead of a hard drive and enough battery power to last an
eight hour day. Hinge the lid so it can function as a tablet computer
with the same multitouch capabilities as the iPod touch and iPhone.
This would be a hot premium item that so fits into
Apple's niche. People would gladly pay $1,500 - maybe even $2,000 - for
something like this, and all the better if it can also run Windows.
PDAs are disappearing, being replaced by smartphones
and the iPod touch, but they can't hold a candle to a real computer.
UMPC is promising, except that it's locking you into the malware
infested world of Windows or the less than polished open source world
of Linux. Apple needs to go there, and between the Newton, iPhone, iPod
touch, and PowerBook Duo, they have to background to do it better than
anyone else.
We can dream.
Dan
Wildly Misleading Headline
From Tim Harbison:
I'm not one to complain (most of the time), but the headline of the
article iPhone Update Even Breaks
Authorized Apps is wildly misleading. There is no such thing as an
"authorized" app for the iPhone. It simply does not exist.
The text of the article uses the word "unauthorized", which is
accurate. The headline on Low End Mac only serves to fan the flames of
what, in my opinion, is a debate that shouldn't even be happening.
I've explained it this way to friends: You go out and buy yourself a
new car. Then, being unhappy with the performance, you decide to make a
bunch of modifications to the engine. Then you complain when it blows
up in your face and the manufacturer won't honor the warranty.
Do you really believe that there will never be an officially
sanctioned developers kit? If you do, then why the heck are you
complaining when a firmware update wrecks the phone on which you
modified the firmware? If you feel that strongly about being able to
hack the thing, just don't update it!
(please note, this rant is not directed specifically at Low End Mac
or the editors, but at all those complaining that their iPhones have
been bricked because they took it upon themselves to mess around under
the hood and got burnt)
Tim,
Thanks for writing. According to Apple's Greg Joswiak,
as reported by GearLog's
Sascha Segan:
"...Apple takes a neutral stance - they're not
going to stop anyone from writing apps, and they're not going to
maliciously design software updates to break the native apps, but
they're not going to care if their software updates accidentally break
the native apps either."
Thus, Apple has given the green light to software
developers to create native apps for the iPhone, while at the same time
not releasing a Software Developer Kit and warning that iPhone firmware
updates are very likely to break third-party software.
Using the word "authorized" was overly broad. While
Apple has "authorized" third party developers to create native iPhone
apps, it has not authorized any of the apps themselves. We have changed
the heading on that article to iPhone Update Breaks Third Party
Apps.
Dan
Problem with Addonics Adapter and CompactFlash
From Bob Casper:
Hello Dan
Thank you for the previous articles on Low End Mac about replacing a Mac's hard drive with a
flash-based solid state disk. I am interested in this because I
have a graphite clamshell iBook SE
with a noisy 6 gig hard drive. It was very irritating to hear this
constant whirring noise when the iBook was on, so I didn't use it very
often. Plus I had been thinking for a while about getting a larger
drive for it.
I decided to replace the hard drive with a flash drive to experience
a totally silent main storage device. I bought the Addonics CF/IDE
adapter and a CompactFlash card. The flash card is a Transcend
CompactFlash 16 GB, Ultra Speed 133x, supporting Ultra DMA 4 (fixed
disk mode). I could have bought a faster 233x speed 8 GB card for
the same money, but opted for the larger storage capacity. The adapter
and card together cost about $157.
The installation took a few hours, but was manageable thanks to the
excellent iFixit guide and screw
chart. I booted from the original OS 9.0.2 installation CD and did not
see a disk icon for the flash card. Opened the Drive Setup program and
found the flash card. Initialized it using "Mac OS Standard" format,
and this created an icon. Then I proceeded to install OS 9,
updated it to 9.2, installed OS X Panther on top of it, and
upgraded to version 10.3.9 using Software Update.
I am happy to get this far, because I wasn't sure this would work at
all! However my first impression of flash is that it's much
slower than a hard drive. It is silent, of course, which was my
motivation in doing this. But running a software update that took about
an hour before now takes most of an evening. When I am using the
computer it is very sluggish and often freezes for a few seconds
(spinning beach-ball) even when doing simple things like opening the
drop-down Apple menu or moving the slider on the right side to show
more contents in a window. Web browsing with Safari is slower than it
was with my old hard drive, probably because it takes time to write
lots of temporary files to the flash memory.
Do you have any idea for increasing the performance? In the System
Profiler it says the drive is now formatted as "Journaled HFS+". I
tried switching off journaling, but that didn't make a difference. Is
there another disk format which works better with flash? Should I have
gone for the faster 233x flash card?
I value your advice.
Thanks,
Bob
Bob,
The iBook has an Ultra ATA drive bus, which tops out
at 33 MBps. 133x flash memory works out to 20 MBps, or a bit over half
the maximum throughput on that bus. On top of that, reading flash
memory (which is what the "x" measures) is faster than writing, so if
you're depending on virtual memory (always on in Mac OS X),
performance is going to be below the rated read speed - just how much
varies somewhat. Increasing system RAM will help there, and the
clamshell iBooks all support a 512 MB upgrade (as little as $59
nowadays).
Most hard drives have high speed buffers than can send
cached data at full bandwidth, so it's not surprising that the old hard
drive may have been more responsive. To take full advantage of the bus
speed in your iBook, you'll want 233x or faster memory.
Dan
OS 9 File System
From Alvin:
Hi. I can't find anything about the filesystem of OS 9. I'm trying
to revive an iMac by installing OS 9 to its hard disk because it
might have installed OS X PowerPC without upgrading the firmware.
I'm trying to use OS X 86 and an OS 9 emulator called
SheepShaver, which needs a Power Macintosh ROM to work, which could be
found in a System Folder. The iMac's hard disk may still have the
System Folder intact wherein I could extract the ROM to hopefully fix
it, if it was a firmware + OS X booting issue. I'd also need to
know the file system that OS 9 uses just in case I need a software
for OS X Intel that can read the hard disk's filesystem. Would you
know if OS 9 formats hardisks to HFS or to another filesystem?
Thank you in advance.
God bless,
Alvin
Alvin,
Mac OS 9 uses HFS+ as its default operating system,
and you should be able to format the drive in your x86 Mac using Disk
Utility. Make sure you check the box "Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed"
or you won't be able to mount it outside of OS X.
That firmware stuff on older Macs is a pain, as it's
too easy to install an updated version of Mac OS X that doesn't
work with the firmware you've got. Some versions of the Mac OS check
for this first, but not enough of them.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
