From: Ray Byrne <ray@in4media.co.uk>

Date: October 1, 2006 2:20:09 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Using and old G4 Powerbook

Hi Milton,

Thanks for your reply and some answers here:

On 1 Oct 2006, at 20:13, Milton Aupperle wrote:

Hi Ray;

Two questions.

a) Is it an iBook or a PowerBook?

A Powerbook :0]

A PowerBook will have a PMCIA expansion slot and you can add a USB2 PMCIA card for probably less than $40.00 USD. This is the main reason I recommend a PowerBook over a iBook, because if the internal FireWire / Ethernet / USB / WireLess etc. ever go down, you have that option rather than paying Apple $500 to $1000 USD for repairs.

b) Also how fast is the CPU (1 gighz+??)?

500MHz :o[

If you shooting 640x480 in 8 bit and at up to 30 frames per second, with an 800 mhz + CPU, you can likely record directly to a daisy chained FireWire Hard drive rather than the internal drive. Most FireWire hard drives have 2 FW ports, so you should be able to attach a FireWire camera to a FW port on an external FW hard drive and the other back to your Mac. Failing that you could use a FireWire Hub and cable it up that way.

Excuse my ignorance I'm a "Mac User" :o] Does this mean I can e.g. hook the camera up to an external drive's secondary FW port and image using the Powerbook, saving direct to the external drive (not using the Powerbooks drive at all for writing the data to?). I use a Lacie 160GB FW external for back-up at work that comes home with me every night could I use that?

You may be able to do the record to a USB 2 hard drive if you can use a PMCIA USB 2 card too, as the data rate for the video stream is only 9 megabytes per second and even with Apple's dismal USB 2 performance, it should be able to keep up.

HTH..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@outcastsoft.com