General Computer Thread

[Marc]

Apple and Microsoft - a mixture made somewhere.

Do support for a small local non-profit where they use Office365 and a number of staff have Macs.

The executive director is currently in Europe and Word was nagging that she wasn't signed in greatly limiting the functionality.

Advice from Technet - go into Keychain and nuke the Microsoft Office entries.

Bloody things won't die

Look up how to fix the problem. First suggestion is keychain first aid.

Turns out Apple killed a few major versions ago. Next suggestion - reset on keychain and re-import.

yeah not doing that while she's a long long way away.

Further search reveals something almost unheard of. A piece of useful information in Microsoft's tech support forums linking to app some-one had written that fixed the login issue.

Anyway all is good now.

 

[Santaman]

^^ M$ is usually rather iffy with useful help, quite a few times I wound up searching for a fix for M$ Windows or M$ other software problems and there were links in the search engine pointing at solutions on developer and user/techy M$ forums only to find the original post having been cleaned out so you HAD to use the M$ website which points you towards solutions that you don't want/need.. so you having found anything useful is kinda like finding a diamond unicorn which farts rainbows..

 

[Owain Taggart]

Oh look this is delightfully weird. It's a PC a C64 and just plain odd.

On the other hand, while it certainly is an odd machine, it's not the first instance of a Commodore PC that I've seen. The class in high-school I had talked about earlier had Commodore branded PCs running DOS and Windows. I think that shows that the brand was being meted out more than anything back then, and perhaps in an appeal to nostalgia.

 

[Marc]

On the other hand, while it certainly is an odd machine, it's not the first instance of a Commodore PC that I've seen. The class in high-school I had talked about earlier had Commodore branded PCs running DOS and Windows. I think that shows that the brand was being meted out more than anything back then, and perhaps in an appeal to nostalgia.

yep - once the IBM compatitable market really started to take off, companies that made non-DOS based system jumped on the bandwagon.

Commodore did it, Kaypro did it, Osbourne might have done if they hadn't sunk themselves but at the end of the day few survived.

The market place became very crowded and you IBM, Compaq, HP as the top tier. In Australia we had NEC and Epson (the company I started out with was a major dealer and wholesaler for both). Acer I think came along a bit later, there was Packard Bell and a guy named Michael Dell was hocking cheap AT systems.

then you had assemblers that could be region or across several states.

Overall it had the effect of the prices being forced down (and to a certain extent quality) but it was the 90s and the era of the bland biege box. Thirty years later it there are so few of them left.

IBM sold it's PC hardware branch to lenovo after some years of badge engineering, HP bought out Compaq and nearly destroyed both. Dell is still going strong and bought out Alienware. Gateway are gone, Acer are still around but probably just much for their monitors as PCs and laptops. Asus have have some good laptops (bought one 5 years back for the wife and it's still going strong - their IPS screens are are pretty good).

In Australia there was a PC assembler called the Total Peripherals Group who started building systems in the early 90s using ASUS motherboard boards*. They branched out into and ISP and now are one biggest players in the Australian internet market place having bought out a number of ISPs.

*not always with success. I sold the first of their Pentium based system and it was a pain in the arse to get stable for the client. First time I ever had vodka was to celebrate the fucker was finally working properly (the owner was Polish).

 

[Santaman]

Yeah.. I miss the old days when you could walk into one of the computer shops which were scattered around town and search for the right mainboard that could support the 75 or 83Mhz bus speeds of that new Cyrix M2 chip you bought... and then have to dish out quite a stack of cash for the 32MB EDO RAM you had set your eyes on.. computer tinkering was more fun and yes also more frustrating those days..

 

[XCV330]

Not strictly a computer thing, but related to discussion since we sometimes go retro here.

Back in the 90's most PC video games and other multimedia software relied on MIDI files to generate the sounds via a set of specifically numbered instruments. This was a change from 8 bit programs where the tones were generated within the code itself directly to the sound hardware. There was also some of us who just liked General Midi music in its own right.

The sounds you got were whatever your sound card provided (nice if you had the latest Soundblaster, totally butt if you had some old Voyetra). If you wanted a step up from that, it was possible to shell out a silly amount of money for an external device like the Roland Sound Canvas modules to process the sounds instead, at higher quality. I knew about them but never knew anyone with one.

Not as well known even from that, there were versions of these modules with keyboards for composers of the music, like the Roland SK-88. Mine should be arriving from Japan in a couple of weeks, and I am kind of stoked to see what I can do with it. i am looking forward to creating some new variations on retro-game music, and maybe incorporating it into some new tunes as well.

 

[Santaman]

MIDI, yeah that had a few niggles here and there, with the right soundcard you actually got the right sounds.. better was to have a Atari ST back in the day.. Cubase and Logic Pro began on the ST because it was seriously good at MIDI.

 

[XCV330]

Cubase and Logic Pro began on the ST because it was seriously good at MIDI.

that's interesting. I did not know that. I had heard the ST was used a lot in music production, even after they went out of production, but I never knew much more than that about them.

 

[Santaman]

In those days the Atari was the best choice for most people, I mean, sure, you could buy a Fairlight CMI but it was extremely expensive, I mean Jean-Michel Jarre expensive so out of reach of about anyone else..

 

[Marc]

that's interesting. I did not know that. I had heard the ST was used a lot in music production, even after they went out of production, but I never knew much more than that about them.

Tangerine Dream was using them in the early to mid-1980s.

Optical Race (1988) iirc is the biggest example of the Atari at work.

I've also seen some pics from their studio in the early 80s which had a Commodore 64 hooked up though not sure if it was linked to syth or something or perhaps they were making use of it's music capabilities. They've also made use of Apple II.

Forgotten who it was, but watched a youtube video that was a studio tour of a composer with an impressive collection of vintage anlogue synths and the was one being run by a Kaypro II (MatrixSynth thanks to google, not the Emulator II I was initially thinking of).

Now it's Apple hardware that plays a big role.

 

[Santaman]

^^ Nowadays there are a gazillion options that run on about any machine including phones, tablets and the computer in your fridge for some chilled out tunes..

 

[Unicron]

So, I have an oddball question. I had bought some gaming e-books for my ever growing nerd library, and I had imported a number of those when I got my new computer. As I was looking over some of them tonight, I noticed a few of them (rather oddly) only have a blank space instead of the normal cover image, but the rest of the book is not affected. However, there is also one PDF that for some reason is now missing a lot of its internal art/images, and I'm not sure why.

Any advice on this?

ETA: I've noticed a few others that seem to have bits of missing art/images. Also, viewing them in Chrome seems to work fine but the images are still missing if viewed in Safari.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

A couple of suggestions from Adobe's forum re a similar problem in Acrobat viewer:

• Go to Edit>Preferences>Accessibility and set the "Replace document colors" checkbox to Off.
• Go to Edit>Preferences>Page Display and tick the "Show large images" box.

Not sure where the equivalent settings would be in the browsers you mention as I use neither Chrome nor Safari. Perhaps use the Adobe Acrobat viewer instead if the Acrobat extension in the browser is buggy?

 

[FPAlpha]

Yeah.. I miss the old days when you could walk into one of the computer shops which were scattered around town and search for the right mainboard that could support the 75 or 83Mhz bus speeds of that new Cyrix M2 chip you bought... and then have to dish out quite a stack of cash for the 32MB EDO RAM you had set your eyes on.. computer tinkering was more fun and yes also more frustrating those days..

A little over 2 years ago i decided it was time for a completely new rig and i was going to assemble it myself. I basically hit up a few sites i found through google to see what current systems have and use ( if you were not following the knowledge of 3-4 years ago is ancient and not applicable), found a site that recommends specific parts for various performance levels and i started buying the parts.

One comprehensive assembly video later and i was ready and assembly was mostly a breeze, solved the few snags on the way but it was still a somewhat nervewracking moment when i pushed the power button for the first time but it worked the first time.

I built PCs more than 10-15 years ago and it was way more complicated i feel with less instructions and help available online or elsewhere. I feel watching a Pro video and remembering the tips and pitfalls they mentioned went a long way to make assembling a PC easy.

 

[Unicron]

A couple of suggestions from Adobe's forum re a similar problem in Acrobat viewer:

• Go to Edit>Preferences>Accessibility and set the "Replace document colors" checkbox to Off.
• Go to Edit>Preferences>Page Display and tick the "Show large images" box.

Not sure where the equivalent settings would be in the browsers you mention as I use neither Chrome nor Safari. Perhaps use the Adobe Acrobat viewer instead if the Acrobat extension in the browser is buggy?

Well, I've never downloaded a specific Adobe viewer on other MBs since I generally can just use Preview. Do you think that would be a good option? I've seen similar issues on a Google search.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Have you tried using a PDF reader that isn't adobe?

Try FoxIt PDF reader.

 

[Unicron]

I'm saying I haven't used any separate PDF readers in several MacBooks, because until now I've never had a reason to. Preview (which is the default image program in MacOS) never had an issue viewing them properly before now, and many of them work perfectly fine. The fact that they seem to work okay in Chrome suggests it's not necessarily a problem with the PDFs themselves, but in other applications.

I'm open to playing around with such a reader, but if there's a way to avoid that I'd like that solution as well.

 

[Santaman]

Safari is not the best browser to have, it is usually behind the times, might be that it's just glitching or so, as for the Google spyware and tracker browser, no idea, I use Firefox which seems to handle PDF's rather well, with the latest version it even can edit them IIRC.

 

[Azat]

yep - once the IBM compatitable market really started to take off, companies that made non-DOS based system jumped on the bandwagon.

Commodore did it, Kaypro did it, Osbourne might have done if they hadn't sunk themselves but at the end of the day few survived.

The market place became very crowded and you IBM, Compaq, HP as the top tier. In Australia we had NEC and Epson (the company I started out with was a major dealer and wholesaler for both). Acer I think came along a bit later, there was Packard Bell and a guy named Michael Dell was hocking cheap AT systems.Programming homework can be a real headache, but it doesn't have to be. Our programing homework help service is designed to make your life easier. We offer expert assistance in all programming languages, so you can be sure your homework is in good hands.

then you had assemblers that could be region or across several states.

Overall it had the effect of the prices being forced down (and to a certain extent quality) but it was the 90s and the era of the bland biege box. Thirty years later it there are so few of them left.

IBM sold it's PC hardware branch to lenovo after some years of badge engineering, HP bought out Compaq and nearly destroyed both. Dell is still going strong and bought out Alienware. Gateway are gone, Acer are still around but probably just much for their monitors as PCs and laptops. Asus have have some good laptops (bought one 5 years back for the wife and it's still going strong - their IPS screens are are pretty good).

In Australia there was a PC assembler called the Total Peripherals Group who started building systems in the early 90s using ASUS motherboard boards*. They branched out into and ISP and now are one biggest players in the Australian internet market place having bought out a number of ISPs.

*not always with success. I sold the first of their Pentium based system and it was a pain in the arse to get stable for the client. First time I ever had vodka was to celebrate the fucker was finally working properly (the owner was Polish).

Im totally agree with you sir! Thats right point of view.

 

[Unicron]

Safari is not the best browser to have, it is usually behind the times, might be that it's just glitching or so, as for the Google spyware and tracker browser, no idea, I use Firefox which seems to handle PDF's rather well, with the latest version it even can edit them IIRC.

I haven't used Firefox regularly in years. It used to be my default years back before I felt like the version I had then wasn't that reliable and had issues, but perhaps that's not the case with the modern version. I tend to not like Chrome as my default either because of Google.

* shakes the old fart cane *