macs

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:26 am

Oh oh......my iMac just crapped itself.

machine won't boot - just get a grey screen - anyone had that before?

doesn't look good.

We had a really big-arsed electrical storm go through last night - and we lost power for a while. I do have a surge protector - but I'm guessing that might have had something to do with it (ridiculously loud and violent sub-tropical storms are a significant feature of a Brisbane summer. They look great out over the bay, but they're a pain in the arse when they're over your house).

I've had to dig out my old laptop. To my Gift of Music person - my GoM is in the hands of the gods. If my hard drive carks it - I'm in trouble (I'm far too rock and roll to back things up).

So - anyone know anything about Mac hardware problems?

Smalltown Mike · Post by **Smalltown Mike** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:18 am

The hard drive on my Imac died about 8 months ago, I think. I had it replaced, and was thrilled to find they were able to recover 100% of my data. It was reasonably cheap, too, I think it was $200 (uh, Cdn, of course) for the 80 g hardrive and data transfer.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 1:48 pm

Do you have an OS X CD or DVD that you can boot off of? The standard procedure, as you probably know, is to boot off another disc or an external drive and run Disk Utility to try to repair your primary drive. If you have an Apple laptop with FireWire you might be able to boot your desktop from your laptop's drive, by plugging your laptop into your desktop via FireWire and using "target disk mode". (Hold down "T" when booting your laptop, and it will basically function as a FireWire hard drive.)

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 3:27 pm

Lunkhead wrote:Do you have an OS X CD or DVD that you can boot off of? The standard procedure, as you probably know, is to boot off another disc or an external drive and run Disk Utility to try to repair your primary drive. If you have an Apple laptop with FireWire you might be able to boot your desktop from your laptop's drive, by plugging your laptop into your desktop via FireWire and using "target disk mode". (Hold down "T" when booting your laptop, and it will basically function as a FireWire hard drive.)

I tried the OS X CD but it can't seen to find a drive to load on.

When I run Disk Utility - it only seems to only recognise the CD itself - it doesn't seem to be able to find a hard drive.

I'm taking it to the doctor's on Monday - it's still under warranty - hopefully repairs will be painless

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 3:55 pm

You booted from the install/restore CD, ran disk utility, and it didn't see your hard drive at all? When my powerbook HD died a few months ago, disk utility showed it in red lettering with the warning "critical failure", and I had to send it to Apple for repairs. But if your software can't even find your HD to begin with I'd say it's almost certainly not something you'll be able to fix yourself.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 4:47 pm

Yikes, your drive isn't showing up at all? That's probably a bad sign. The other thing you could try is to plug your desktop and laptop together over FireWire, boot up your laptop normally, then boot up your desktop in FireWire target disk mode (hold down "t" while it boots, as I said) and see if your desktop's drive shows up as an external hard drive to your laptop. You could then try to repair it by running Disk Utility on your laptop.

boltoph · Post by **boltoph** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:01 pm

Not sure if TechTool might help. I use it all the time just to keep things running tip-top.

It also allows you to create eDrive so if there's a problem you can boot from an external disc, like external firewire drive (not sure if this is similar to what you were saying, Lunkhead. In this case though, you hold command while it's booting, or so I've heard... I've never actually had to use it yet.) I guess there are some bad comments there, but I've heard good things from a personal source who was able to fix some probs. with it before.

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 3:44 am

When you boot from the system cd, can you access "About this Mac" from the Apple menu? (It's been so long for me that I don't remember if it's possible to do this.)

If so, clicking on the "More Info..." button at the bottom of that window will take you to an interface that will tell you every last little thing about your system. Select the "ATA" item under "Hardware" and it'll show you your internal hd and your optical drive. If they're live, that is.

Well, obviously your optical's live. But the System Profile will tell you how dead the hd is.

Hindsight advice: Buy a UPS unit (uninterrupted power supply, aka battery backup). It'll help level out the surges from unsteady power, and unlike the one-shot power strip surge protectors (which don't tell you they've been boned by dirty power), UPSes tend to beep, whine, bitch and moan at you when they're compromised and no longer able to do their job.

/2Â¢

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:00 am

Weird thing is - the computer died - it just froze up - then I spent hours with the system CD's and manual etc. trying to revive it with no luck.

Then out of the blue - it started ok - and everything was fine. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought "well - let that be a warning - I better back up my files".

the next time I went to use it a few hours later - it was dead again - and hasn't worked since.

As a civil engineer by trade - I deal more with the low-tech than the high-tech - but I'm backing a simple dirty connection. I hope so - that hard drive contains all of the recored works of Caravan Ray. It would be a terrible loss for future generations.

blue · Post by **blue** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:16 am

hahaha macs. if you ran linux...

Post by **Lunkhead** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 11:05 am

(if you ran Linux...) your computer would never have been useful in the first place! Just kidding. Anyway, this product looks like it could be useful in the future for Mac problems such as the one Caravan Ray is experiencing:

http://www.micromat.com/protege/protege_intro.html

boltoph · Post by **boltoph** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:51 pm

Lunkhead wrote:... this product looks like it could be useful in the future for Mac problems such as the one Caravan Ray is experiencing:

http://www.micromat.com/protege/protege_intro.html

Pretty cool! This is the same software I was talking about, but in a separate stand alone package, with OSX, boot disk, everything you'd need... TechTool Rocks! I need one of those things...

Post by **Lunkhead** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:47 pm

Bump! Wow, what a difference a few months make, huh? I'm getting more and more tempted to buy an Intel Mac. I wonder if Nuendo/Cubase would run in XP on it?

Tex Beaumont · Post by **Tex Beaumont** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:10 am

Caravan Ray wrote: I hope so - that hard drive contains all of the recored works of Caravan Ray. It would be a terrible loss for future generations.

BTW: Caravan Ray did lose his hard drive. Thankfully though - his songs were saved on Songfight!

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:34 pm

Hi gang!

My only decent computer is now dead, lucky me. All I have to work with right now is the old laptop that serves primarily as a warm place for my cat to sleep on. Anyways, I think I'mma buy a Macintosh.

Can I get away with a laptop as my main machine?

For the same money, the worries I have are slower drive speed (5400 vs 7200) and probably less memory. And the laptops are all G4 machines instead of G5; I don't know what that means really, but four is less than five so it's probably not as good. That's obviously less than ideal, but will I even notice? A typical "Charcoal" rock song is something like fifteen to twenty-five tracks of real audio, maybe half of that in stereo, and the only thing in MIDI is usually a click track that doesn't make it into the final mix anyways. Will this be too much for a decent Powerbook to handle?

I'm not so worried about software right now. I suspect that Garageband is good enough, and I can always upgrade that later. I also have plenty of workable keyboards and monitors that I can use, so I don't really need a ridiculous 92" screen or anything. I just want to be able to rock, and, preferably, also to roll, and, ideally, to be able to do both of those fine things with some degree of portability.

I'm thinking something along the lines of this guy, and I'd appreciate opinions from folks who already have something similar.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:18 pm

For what it's worth I got by for quite a while using only a laptop (although that was a Windows machine, not a Mac). There was some problem with my desktop machine and I didn't get around to fixing it for a long time.
Starfinger might have info on this if you PM him. I don't recall if his Mac is a laptop.
-bill

Post by **Lunkhead** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:32 pm

Not to be snide or anything, but I think you'd be wasting your money at this point to buy a PowerPC Gx Apple. Check out the Intel based MacBooks and MacBook Pros. You'll basically get something at least 2x as fast for similar money, with a lot of other improvements thrown in. Not all the software runs natively on Intel Macs yet but when they do they'll be much faster on your MacBook than they'd ever be on a PowerBook. Also, my experience with buying Apples is that you can shave a couple hundred bucks off the price by buying a refurbished one (look for the red "Sale!" tag on the Apple store online) and you won't really be able to tell the difference between a new unit and a refurb. An Intel/Apple laptop would definitely be enough to handle the kind of audio projects you're describing, too. You might at some point want an external FireWire drive. Also you might want to consider that the MacBooks have significantly less capable video cards than the MacBook Pros.

Smalltown Mike · Post by **Smalltown Mike** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:04 pm

I agree, mostly because Apple is going to move entirely into the intel Macs, from what I understand. I think a Mac G4 will be obsolete way faster than the intel mac you buy the same day. So there's that.

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:13 pm

bzl wrote:I'm thinking something along the lines of this guy, and I'd appreciate opinions from folks who already have something similar.

I have the 17" PowerBook G4, and it handles everything I need. I have had 20 audio tracks plus soft synths, etc. and have had no problems. I use Logic Pro 7. On my old 15" (real old) I used to use the "freeze" feature in Logic to reduce CPU usage on tracks that had lots of processing, etc. when it got overloaded. Haven't needed to since then. I love being portable since I travel so much these days. And a couple years ago I mixed a SF entry sitting in Central Park, which felt pretty cool. There are times when I wish I had a huge screen but other than that I'm more than happy.

I would certainly go for the Intel Mac now a days. And I've been playing with Garageband and am really impressed. It's really convenient for capturing quick ideas, but I developed a new song on it last weekend and it's amazing for free software.

jack · Post by **jack** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:51 pm

roymond wrote: And I've been playing with Garageband and am really impressed. It's really convenient for capturing quick ideas, but I developed a new song on it last weekend and it's amazing for free software.

i've become one of the world's biggest fanboys for Garageband. 95% of my remix stuff is done with it. I still use ProTools for live recording, but Garageband is a revolution for me. a free one at that.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:57 pm

garageband is awesomely simple. if anyone from the apple corp. is reading this, they can feel free to use that as a tag line or something.

bz£ · Post by **bz£** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 6:12 pm

Well, I came awfully close to buying a Macbook Pro, until it dawned on me that I'd have to take the money away from my Travel to Santa Cruz Fund. I'm still gonna get one this fall, when the cash is flowing freely again and I am lighting my cigarettes with hundred dollar bills again, because, man, do they look purdy.

In the meantime I think I have repaired my PC to the point where it is usable for now. I've still lost an awful lot of stuff, but, you know, oh well. Thank god for the Free Plug-Ins thread!

Incidentally, I like the look and feel of the Macbook Amateur better, at least of the few that the local CompUSA had on display. The keyboards are nicer and I think the black looks better than that plain aluminum. Maybe that stuff's available; I guess I'll find out.