The eMac Project

Posted on July 31, 2008

It all started a couple of months ago, when I found an eMac on Craigslist for $60. Neat! I thought, a project computer. Little did I know…

It arrived in good condition, just a sharpie wound on the top edge that I tastefully covered with a sticker. Once that project was completed, I decided to start in on installing Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the LiveCD wouldn’t work. It would boot up and then end with a black screen. Cock. Fortunately, the alternate-installer cd is text based, so I could use that. Ubuntu installed, let’s start up. Boot screen, and… Blackness. After spending several hours on the Google, I figure out, it’s a problem with the X windowing system’s configuration file. It has no way of working with the eMac’s built-in display. No windowing system, no UI. I had no experience editing an xorg.conf file, I don’t know what most of the settings mean. I’m barely able to edit a text file from the command line. After some more googling, I found a copy of somebody else’s xorg.conf file for an eMac, for another version of Linux. But I somehow managed to figure out which settings I need, saved the changes, and rebooted. And result! I managed to solve that problem.

But it was so slow in Ubuntu. Running Panther, the machine’s paltry 256 Mb of RAM didn’t offer much but it was able to run decently. Not so in Ubuntu. It was slooooow. The time from clicking on a menu to the menu actually being drawn was measurable in seconds. Ok, I’ll get some RAM then. 2×512 Mb sticks from OWC, $60 shipped. Not a bad deal at all. Amazingly, replacing memory in the machine is quite simple, only one screw involved. And speed was much improved. Hurray.

But after spending a few days with Ubuntu, I realized that I don’t really care for it. Despite three days effort, sound wasn’t working. There was no plausible workaround for the fact that there’s no Flash support for a PowerPC Linux machine. And that’s not all. A lot of the big selling points of Ubuntu simply haven’t caught up with PowerPC support, and might never, since it’s such a tiny sliver of an already small segment. It was time to switch back.

There was just one small problem. It didn’t come with any CDs. And since it only has a CD-ROM drive, any DVDs I had lying around wouldn’t work. I did some web searching, as there are places online where you can still buy old OSes, including Jaguar and Puma. Only problem is, they’re very price. And I’m not willing to pay $75-$130 for a dated system. Unfortunately, eBay auctions for CDs were few and far between, and frequently had bids pushing to the retail prices. Finally I found an auction for a set of eMac restore CDs. I asked the seller if they were CDs, just to be sure, and he said yes. So I bid, and won for the amazingly low cost of $35 shipped. A few days later the CDs arrived, so I eagerly put them into the plucky little eMac.

And nothing happened. The eMac refused to boot from the CD drive. Ubuntu wouldn’t even recognize that there was a CD in the drive. Did some more googling, even posted on the PPC section of the Ubuntu support forums. I put the CD in my iMac to make sure it wasn’t a bad disk. It was fine. I ejected the disk and that’s when I noticed something. On the disk it said “DVD”. Even though I had asked specifically if it was a CD and was told yes. Shit.

At this point, I made an executive decision. It would be cheaper to buy a DVD drive for the eMac than it would be to drop more money on disks. I popped down to the shops and found an ok DVD drive for $49. And it even has Lightscribe. Whatever that is. I tear apart the eMac using Wilko’s eMac teardown guide. It’s a pretty machine inside, all shiny chrome and neat parts, so I took some pictures, which will go up on the Flickr soon. Continue taking it apart… Still taking it apart. 45 screws later, I pop the new DVD drive in. 45 screws. That’s bad. Then there’s putting the whole thing together, remembering which screws go where, and so forth. When I finally put it together, I only had four screws left over, and no guarantee that the drive or machine was even going to work when I hit the power button.

Plug it in, nice spark from inside the translucent power cord, hit the power button, and it works! Put the DVD in the drive, reboot, and even that works! Amazing! So now I’ve got Panther running on the machine, a 700 Mhz G4 eMac that only cost me $205 altogether.

So that project is all finished, I sit down to see what I’ve missed in the RSS feeds, and I see this.

Cock.

I’m a Tard

Posted on July 11, 2008

So since I didn’t buy an iPhone today, I thought I would treat myself and get a Pinnacle HD Stick. It’s a handy little device with a USB doodle on one end and a coax doodle on the other end. With the included EyeTV software I can connect it to analog cable and watch and record tv on my Mac, much like a Tivo. Hella cool. Once I upgrade the EyeTV software I’ll be able to schedule recordings, edit clips and cut out commercials, and convert to iPod video. All very awesome, except for one thing.

I forgot to buy a coax cable. My cable input is on the opposite side of the room from my computer, a good thirty feet of distance. So I need to buy an extra long cable. Until then, I’m stuck using the included antenna, which only picks up 3ABN, a very Jesus-y channel. So I don’t have much to watch on my new tv-computer for now. Oh well.

New Tech at Home

Posted on July 10, 2008

Since USPaul had to go all high and mighty and brag about the cool new stuff he got, I figure I’d do the same. Gotta show off the goods, y’all.

• A Navigon GPS unit - Not technically here yet, but it should be by next Monday. Woot had these on sale the other day for 80 bucks. I’ve been wanting a GPS unit for a while, but was a little leery of the price point. Not that a good GPS unit isn’t worth $300-$400, but I’m not sure if I’d get $400 worth of use out of one. However, at a sub-$100 price point, that’s well worth it to me. And it’s even a talky kind, which is more than I was expecting at that price. I’m pretty ‘cited.
• New RAM for the eMac - I got the eMac a couple months back, and while neat and a great deal, it was kinda light on the RAM. Only 256 MB. So I finally put down a little money and got a gigabyte’s worth from OWC. And I’ll be damned, but the thing is hecka zippy after the upgrade. By the way, the upgrade was super easy, only one phillips-head screw to deal with. Now I just have to find some OSX install CDs for it (I’m watching you eBay), because my experience with Linux on it has been, shall we say, sub-par. (Seriously, no sound on it, and no chance of getting Flash working, ever. F that.)
• Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii - I f’ing love this game. I’ve already sunk several hours into it and I’m only a tiny bit through. It’s the same basic premise as the past couple of Mario games, collecting stars. But this game has the best graphics yet, a great soundtrack, and is trippy as hell. You play on little planets, and so half the time you’re hanging upside down. When I first started I was afraid of jumping because I didn’t know if I’d fall off or not. Still, this game is fun. I’d say the best installment since Super Mario RPG for the SNES.
• No New iPhone - Which is strange I know, because it’s pretty much expected of me. Hell I do want one, I really do. Even though my current iPhone will get the version 2 software. Even though it would represent an extra $15-$20 a month on my phone bill. Even though it’s the same kind of crappy camera, and the same processor. I still want one. Faster internet is one thing, but I’m most excited at the prospect of having 16 gigs of flash memory versus my current four, and having better battery life. But, here’s the dealbreaker. There’s no 3G in Nebraska. Whatsoever. In fact, a huge majority of the country lacks AT&T’s 3G coverage. And I’m just not at all willing to pay an extra $20 per month that I’m simply not getting. F that.

  But then again, at least it’s not Rogers Wireless.

Nerdvana

Posted on February 10, 2008

I went to Sam’s Club today on a lark, and saw the exact same monitor that I had been eyeing at Best Buy earlier that day, for $75 cheaper. Couldn’t not pick it up. My desk is now 24″ more awesome. Watching the Front Row on it looks fantastic. I gotta say I’m happy with it.

Elsewhere… I got my Mac Classic to run. There’s not much to do on it, but maybe I should look into making it useful. It’s still pretty keen.

The banding on the screen isn’t normally visible, that’s just the camera’s image sensor picking up on the refresh rate.

Macworld Keynote

Posted on January 15, 2008

If anybody wants to know what I think about what Steve had to say today, head on over to MacFags to read my write-up.

The Apple Store Review Revue

Posted on January 1, 2008

Apparently, Mac users will write reviews for just about anything sold to them. I think that’s an overall trend of the internet, and I may just expand this to other sites later on, but we’ll start with the Apple Online Store. I love these things ‘cuz I know it sends DB into a frothing rage matched only by Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II.

I was surprised to find out that Monster makes a cassette adapter. Even better is the fact that it’s very poorly made and is very vulnerable to EM interference. Here’s a common review for the Monster iCar Cassette Adapter.

Do not waste your money!
I do not have a newer auto that comes equipped with the superior in-car jack for audio function for MP-3 players, iPods, etc. So I went to the Apple Store and they recommended this item. It does not work! Completely jammed my car’s cassette player. Now I cannot eject it from the mechanism. So now I have to take the car in to the dealership and have them figure out how to gain access to the cassette player and rip that puppy out of there.

Stay away from this product!!

I have a feeing that this dumbass has a cassette player that is incompatible with adapters, and that’s why it got stuck. Kind of like those people that stick Mini-DVDs in slot-load drives.

How about reviews for a 2Gb SD card?

i accidently ran my memorycard in my laundry machine and in the dryer! when i found it why i was folding my clothes i freaked out because i was worried it hadn’t saved my pictures and videos, but when i put it in my camera about a month ago i worked! i’ve had it for the entire summer now and even now it still works as if i bought it yesterday!

This one was just funny to me. Whether it’s true or not, I hope lots of people test this.

Surely nobody would review a surge projector, right?

I love this little thing, it works great! Easy to use…
(28 of 34 people found this review useful)

Good. They were able to figure out how to plug it into the wall, and how to plug other things into it. Some of those things are hard to figure out.

Here are some reviews for a 6 ft. Belkin USB cable.

Trouble-free cable keeps the data humming. Apple delivered within 24 hours. A solid value from an efficient supplier.

the usb helped me save alot of money it saved me to buy a new printer u should get it if u lost your usb cald on your printer it saved me!!!!!!!!!!!!
(25 of 50 people found this review useful)

That last one is my favorite. Not only is it absolute nonsense, not only did this person think that they would have to buy a new printer because they lost the USB cable, not only do they miss the fact that when you buy a new printer, it doesn’t come with a USB cable, but 25 people found this review to be useful. That’s just awesome. People reviewed the review.

News Hottie of the Week: Jemima Kiss

Posted on November 12, 2007

Hurray, another news hottie. This time up: Jemima Kiss (pronounced “kish”, apparently), columnist for the Guardian. Ms. Kiss writes the Guardian’s gadget/tech blog PDA. On top of being an intelligent and attractive geek, she’s also a huge Apple fan. (DB look away for this sentence) And she’s a fan of her recently purchased iPhone. (DB continue reading) She has a personal blog that’s interesting as well. And let’s face it, the Guardian blog is far better written than CrunchGear. So there is that.

Leopard Some More, A Response.

Posted on October 28, 2007

Over at Wind the Frog DB asked some questions about Leopard. I was going to post answers to his and others’ questions in the comments section, but some how it turned into a whole fucking essay, so instead I’ll just post the thing up here.

The dock on the right or left…works ok?
Yes the look of the dock changes when you’re side dockin’. It reverts to a transparent dark bar similar to the previous dock. Check my Skitch for a screenshot. There’s a hidden preference if you want the dock in the bottom but prefer the new-old transparent dark bar. Oh, and when you’re side dockin’ stacks doesn’t fan out in the cool manner. But that’s livable.

Anyone test the audio/video quality with iChat?
Haven’t done video/audio chat yet, I’d have to do my hair first. I am tempted though because I want to test the new chat recording feature. iChat still disconnects randomly but at least now it automatically reconnects.

Coverflow/Preview work ok? Or is it real dodgy?
I haven’t used Coverflow either, because the only use I really see in it is browsing porn/random images folders. For seeing what documents are I hit space bar and that brings up QuickView right away. Which is another awesome feature. Works like a charm. Preview.app has gotten a lot better at loading quickly and handling multiple documents/images at once. And you can resize images within the app now. About f’ing time.

On the Intel machines, can you tell it is faster?
The OS on the whole does run faster, though that’s always been the case with OSX. The newest version always runs a li’l zippier than the previous. Also: Me and my MacBook Pro are rockin’ 64-bit I was just impressed how fast the installation was compared to installing Tiger and Panther.

Anything else you would like to add?
Safari resizes images to fit the window and zooms to full size with a double click. That is a feature that I rather missed from Firefox. Now if somebody would make proper adblocking for Safari so I don’t have to look at NSFW ads on FaceBook (which I’ve already complained to them about). And I totally love resizable text input boxes. Perfect for when WP gives you a small space to type in and I have to write up a big post like this.

Last.fm’s client needs to be updated because you can’t switch off showing it in the dock, and it hangs when you quit the program fifty percent of the time which annoys me, but I’ll get by ’til they update it. Also, InDesign was totally borked thanks to the upgrade, although I’m hopefully going to be finding a workaround for that next week.

Paul said: I read that the iLife was a backwards step for iMovie and/or iDVD in terms of functionality, otherwise I might be upgrading too.
Yes you can still get the previous version of iMovie after the upgrade, or if it’s already installed, ‘08 leaves it on the system. I would say that it’s not so much a step down for iMovie as it is a step left. They completely rewrote it so that it’s a different program. I think they’re trying to push iMovie as the program for the unwashed non-tech saavy masses who know nothing of video editing, and want to push the more experienced people (i.e., the people complaining about iMovie ‘08) to upgrading to Final Cut Express. iDVD isn’t so much worse as it is that Apple hasn’t really upgraded iDVD in the past two revisions. They just pack in a couple new themes and call it good. I’ve only used iDVD once in the past three and a half years of owning a Mac.

I think that’s all I got for now. I might have more later, or possibly a video of a monkey washing a cat. Who knows!

Leopard Livebloggin’ #7

Posted on October 26, 2007

It’s not “Line Livebloggin’” because I’m no longer in line. I’m at home, installing on the MacBook Pro. The plan is, do a clean fresh install on the MBP, and a backup on the iMac. We’re all good to go. The wait was fun really. I was worried when I showed up and there was nobody there, but people did eventually show up, and by the time six pm rolled around and they opened the doors, there was a crowd of about a hundred or so. The big exciting news? John from Apple’s Guided Tour works at our store. I hugged him.

Security hassled the waiters twice, because we were blocking foot traffic (but not actually) and because people were leaning on the gigantic planters, which are apparently made of plastic. They had the scary orange forms, but fortunately none were given out. Just typical security guard “let’s hassle dudes because I’ve got this plastic badge” stuff. One of them rode on a Segway.

Before I wrap this up, gotta give shout outs to Pete, the guy that made everybody wear badges, Johnny for being entertaining in the line and for being a loud guy with ice cream, to the one cool security guard of the bunch, who I shall name Edgar because I don’t know his name, and to the guy rocking the Cube G4 t-shirt. Live the dream. Peace.

Pictures will be forthcoming in the Flickr stream as soon as Flickr gets their API issues sorted. And I’ll have a proper write up on Leopard in a couple of days hopefully, after I’ve had time to use it.

Mmmm. New Mac smell.

Leopard Line Livebloggin’ #6

Posted on October 26, 2007

Woot! I’ve got my copy, as well as a t-shirt and a new case for the phone. Now to drive back to Lincoln and start installing. Expect a final write up tonight when I can type on a proper keyboard.

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