Private!! Do not enter!!! I dare you!!!!

I must get this off my chest.
It's bearing down on me!
I can't breath!
Somebody help me!!!!!!!

I have a confession to make.......
I love my Mac.
There, I've said it!!!
YES YES!!!!
Oh the liberation, the freedom, the abuse I'm gonna get!!!
I don't give a flying fig, no not me, why cos I'm a happy fig and I luuurrvvvee my Mac :)))

Do you want to know why?
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Whenever I turn on a Mac, whether it's one of mine or someone else's I know that I will get things done on it. No problems and no hassles.
I even look forward to putting it on and being creative.
I love the user interface, it's so pleasing to the eye to look at and slick, and so user friendly.
I love the feeling of being in control on a Mac and the feeling of empowerment you get.
The Mac is my willful friend and goes about it's business with a calm and thorough demeanor.
I take it for granted:))))

G4 Karma

Some folks are never happy.
My old mate Keith (bless him) has been a Mac user since the summer of 94 when he bought a second hand SE 30 and a Plus for about £200.
Recently he bought a G4 MDD 867 dual off ebay for £70 (it came with 2 Gb of RAM, Superdrive and the Apple speakers, bargain!!!) His son's birthday was coming up and he wanted to replace his G4 450 dual for something with a bit more va va voom and to replace the 350 iMac his son had outgrown basically.
But wait! what's that, a G4 1Gb dual for £120, MMMMMMMMMMMMM, yub yub commander ;p........... Crickey, and I thought I was baaaad......
So the 2 turn up and the 867 worked like a charm, but low and behold the 1 Gb would not turn on!!!!!!
I'm sure the air was blue, very blue that day in Cumbria and probably verging on purple.
In the meantime I was making my way back from the Yorkshire Dales on the Kwaka having spent nigh on 3 weeks away :)))
That evening I popped round to see Keith and the new Mac and to wish his son a happy birthday.
There on the floor was the 1 Gb Mac half hidden in shame and disgust. A rather sheepish Keith explained what had happened and I took the poor thing home for some cuddle errrr tender loving care.
I plugged it all in and pushed the Power On button. Nothing.
I opened the door and pressed the PMU ( Power Management Unit ) button and started her up. Again nothing.
I re-opened the door but this time I left it open so that I could listen if anything as to what was or wasn't working.
It started up! It booted up into a fresh install of Tiger with the HD titled 'UNTITLED' I renamed the drive and repaired the Permissions of which there were a few, but that was to be expected with a fresh install of Mac OS X.
The door was still open at this point, so I closed it up and the Mac went straight out.
Hmm. I tried to restart it with no luck.
I again opened the door and left it open and it would not start. So I again pressed the PMU button and left the door open, and it started.
So it would not start with the door closed, simple as that.
I took out the graphic card and the Superdrive, disconnected the HD and restarted it with the door closed. Nothing. I checked the PSU (Power Supply Unit) cables for wear and tare, checked all the connections and basically didn't have a bloody clue!!!!
Went and made myself a cup of tea as I wasn't ready for the strong stuff yet and had a good think about it in bed.
The next day I went over what had happened and Keith to his credit suggested fiddling with the PSU connector box on the motherboard.
So that evening I took my life in my own hands. I turned on the Mac, yep, you guessed it, with the door open, and as it started up I rocked the PSU connector and the Mac went off light a light. Ah, dodgy connection. Oh bugga, that's either gonna be expensive or fiddly.
Expensive PSU are the norm on Macs I'm afraid, since the start-up sequence on the Mac is different concerning voltage. The G4 in particular tend to have more pins (22 for the Ethernet G4 and 24 for the MDD G4) than PC PSU's. You can expect to pay at least £100 for a second hand one on e-bay! The main problem with the MDD models were the noisy fans that came with them. Now 2 of these 4 fans are actually placed in the PSU, groan................ My own 1.25 Dual MDD is as noisy as muck but I put up with it as it is such a brilliant machine. I shall have to replace the fans though when I begin to record with microphones during music sessions in the near future :)
Now the fiddly bit I mentioned earlier involves a brand new PC ATX PSU with a quieter fan off e-bay for about a tenner and some re-soldering of cables and an extra bit of connector block for the 4 extra pins. Now I have recently found a connector conversion block that has a 20 pin female to 24 pin male block on e-bay that I could use, but it would still involve juggling some wires about, but it would make it a lot neater and quicker to do.
There is one problem with this conversion, and it only becomes a problem if you use the Apple Studio Displays as they have a power unit built into them which powers the USB hub on the display. Fortunately Keith uses a bog standard PC display and it will not be a problem.
So Keith was keen on the ATX conversion with the quieter fan and least expense, until today when he mentioned that the seller on e-bay who sold him the Mac is sending him a replacement PSU for it.
Oh well there goes my fun. On the other hand we really ought to replace all 4 fans for quieter versions and maybe some UV lights in there and maybe a liquid cooling system with a CPU upgrade and and and..................

Harrier jump jet vs audio madness

I have a love hate relationship with my G4 1.25 dual MDD. Yes you heard it here.......:/
As a 32 bit computer, nothing comes close to it, absolutely nothing. Great looks, phenomenal computing power, superb operating system, and those @*!******** FANS!!!!!!!!!!!
If I had a harrier jump jet land in my back garden, I wouldn't hear it at all if the G4 was on. I'm not kidding you, I'm not surprised they were nick named "The wind tunnel Macs". Why spend £60 million on a harrier when you can pick up a MDD G4 for £120 on ebay!!!!!
I half expect it to be hovering in attack mode when I come back into the room, firing RAM chips out of it's exhaust vents! Crickey.......
I digress, I really do......
I was trying (being the appropriate word) to have a conversation with a friend of mine on Skype using a microphone through a Griffin iMic. All she could hear were the @*@******** FANS!!!!!!
I have decided to change them, once and for all, for I have inadvertently become the owner of a rather nice set of CD decks and a very powerful DJ mixer along with my Casio keyboard. So I have bought a MIDI interface and am currently plugging all this stuff in to the Mac and using it in Garageband.
Now I am no disk jockey by any stretch of the imagination, I can't spin a bike wheel let alone a CD or record, but I have 100's of loops on my external drive and I keep coming across 100's more as free downloads. The other thing is, I want to make my own, as I can never find what I am really looking for.
So the plan is to use my keyboard to produce the loops and to change the instrumentation and add effects in Garageband. It's bleedin' clever how it works. The mixer has all sorts of effects on it too, so I could use them to some extent provided I burn the tracks I have made onto CD's and play them through the mixer to add these effects and re-record them in real time on Garageband. A long winded way of doing things yes, but you never know or learn anything unless you try.
I would also like to record myself drumming, but a better microphone is required really, and I had better make that 2 microphones.
My friend Keith down the road here has Logic 6 plus various drums, a very nice Yamaha keyboard and a set of semi professional microphones, but the barn isn't finished yet for him to put all his stuff into, so I'm learning the audio trade as they say.
But those @***%£&**** FANS!!! are going big time this coming week when the new ones arrive :))))))))