h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello there,

Three of my professors want me to find out how to do just what you are talking about in order to archive video records of educational projects; however, they have rather slow G3 computers with CD writers rather than DVD. I found a thing that changes analog to digital (DV) for $300 and a program called "Toast" that puts it into MPEG and will put data onto CDs. But I do not know how to get around the fact that the computers don't have very large memories. And I don't think there's a new and fast computer in the budget any time soon.

I believe I have heard that it is possible to attach an older computer drive with another in order to enable them to pool their resources and together as one have a very large (double?) amount of memory. We do have an additional older Mac we could use for the job so this would be excellent if it is possible. But I don't know if this is even true, and also I do not know the proper language for it-- as a result, my websearches on the topic have been fruitless.

If someone were to tell me how to accomplish this feat, I believe I could do it.

Now I just need to find that someone. Is it you? Or anyone you know? If you help me I will be very grateful and the karma you accrue will be enormous. Please send answers to [email protected] if you have good ideas about this and a moment to share them.

Thanks for listening,
Elizabeth

Hi Grace

TIMELORD asked for a Guru to come across and look at your problem with the G3s.

I'll give some advice here but you might want to ask again over at The Orchard (A690653) where us MacFreaks hang out .

Toast is very good and you should have no problems with it.

Now we'll tackle speed and memory. I'm typing this on a 350MHz G3 with a 12 GB hard disk and 256 MB of physical RAM. I have the Virtual RAM set to 257MB.

The speed of my computer is certainly slower than a new 733MHz G4 (but it is not disastrous). You can change the processor to give you a bigger number of MHz but the chips needed to do this are expensive so it probably isn't an option for you. Joining together two 350MHz G3s will not give you a 700MHz machine - it will give you a 350MHz machine with more memory and storage space. On the other hand, if each machine is working on a separate task, you may get through the work at a faster rate. But that is true whether they are networked or not.

However, if you are manipulating very large files (> ~60% physical RAM) the amount of RAM and Virtual RAM you have will make a difference to the speed too. Understanding this is a bit of a black art. You will probably need to pick our brains about this over at the Orchard. What I would say here is that RAM is cheap and easy to fit so buy as much as you can. You will usually get the optimum speed if VRAM = RAM + 1.

You may want to consider moving RAM between the two computers so that one has a lot and the other has just enough to run the OS.

The Hard Disk Capacity (hilite the HD icon and press Command-i) doesn't effect speed so much although a very full disk will interfere with the operation of virtual memory. The hard disk is longer term storage and joining the two Macs together will be an advantage.

All you need to network two macs is a crossover ethernet cable. they cost about a fiver. I got one free with MacFormat last month.

I'll send this answer to you in an email as well as posting it here.



Amy the Ant

A couple of further thoughts

Firstly, it would be nice to know just what sort of machines these are. In my view the most critical limiting factor may not be the procesor speed but the speed of the CDRW drives you are using

G3's with CDRW drives sounds a bit like early 2001 "slot loading" imacs (but it could mean earlier imacs, or G3's, with external USB CDRW drives added - see below) . The processor speed of these shouldn't be a problem, but the speed of CDRW drives almost certainly will be. The CD drives in these machines were slow by modern standards(8x write speed for CD-R's, 4x write speed for CD-RW from memory). This means that they take about 10 minutes to burn a CD-r at full speed, or 20 minutes for a CD-RW.
If you have a lot of stuff to archive, its going to take a long time, even with mpegs.

With these "slot loading" imacs though (apart from the 350Mhz 2000 Summer Edition) you can add a much faster CDRW drive that you hook up through the "Firewire" port. Currently some models of these can write at up to 32x (so a disk only takes a couple of minutes to burn) . This might be worth considering if this is the sort of computer we are talking about..

If the computers are older "tray loading" iMacs they only come equipt with "USB version 1" ports , which are much, much slower than firewire. Many people have attached USB CD writers to these, but they are even slower than the internal drives in the slot loading iMacs. There is a way to upgrade the early machines, with a replacement card from Sonnet technologies that increases the processor speed and adds firewire ports. Its expensive though, and you would still need to buy an external "firewire" CD writer as well. If they aren't iMacs, but early "G3" modular computers, then you can add a firewire card for much less, but, again you would still have to buy the external CDRW firewire drive.

Amy's comments about increasing memory are certainly important. To do this sort of work I would be suggesting that you have at least 256 meg of RAM in the computers concerned. RAM is cheapish still though. A more modern Hard disk is also likely to be faster and larger than the ones originally fitted. You end up with some difficult trade offs - up[grade the old computers or buy a new one. The new eMacs are very good value for money , for example.

Its worth bearing in mind that the quality that you get out of this process with Mpegs or quicktime movies is not going to be brilliant.

The sort of questions that it would be good to know the answers to before you commit yourselves to spending any money include - what sort of quality level do you need (full iMac screen, half screen, quarter screen, wall projection?) , how much stuff are we talking about here (minutes, hours, days, weeks of video?) , how long do you need to store it for (weeks, years, decades, eternity). Are you going to be dedicating the computer, or computers to the task, or will they have to do other work too?

I would give up any idea of "sharing " processor time etc by connecting the machines. The communication delays between them will easily outway any advantages you could get this way, even if it were possible.

Get back with some more info about the computers concerned and your needs, and I'm sure one of the newly arrived DADBUs (Disgruntled Apple Discussion Board users) will be able to give some more advice.

Cheers

Rod

Rod, I didn't get the impression Grace was talking about iMacs.

Grace, are the G3s you refer to grey (boring old computers) or are they blue-fronted weird looking ones? Do they have an integral monitor or a separate one?

Amy

Hi Amy. they could well be modular G3's. Didn't seem clear to me from the post, so I tried to cover both to some extent.

The principles are pretty similar though. The CDRW drive is likely to be the biggest limiting factor in either case. The G3's will be cheaper to upgrade to Firewire than early iMacs (or to add an internal, fast CDRW to - though you actually can also do this to an imac), but outside of that, there is not a great deal of difference really.

As I said, I think we need a bit more info to give a good answer, but the "joining processors" approach almost certainly isn't the way to go in my opinion.

Cheers

Rod

What's a modular G3?

I suspect the Firewire option (though eminently sensible) is going to be outside the budget. I get the impression that a 5 pound ethernet cable is just about all she'll get.

If you're archiving a *lot* of video, then think seriously about doing what I did and buying a stand-alone DVD recorder - it digitises and burns in real-time, rather than the three or four times real-time it takesw to do the same job on a computer-based system (Mac or PC, it's all the same).

Going for the computer based solution only makes sense if you need to do a lot of editing of the resulting MPEGs. For my purposes, though, I can do what I need with just the DVD recorder. As a result, in the few weeks I've had it, I've digitised 60 discs worth of video.

I know the computer solutions are a little cheaper, but when you factor £300 for the analogue->DV converter, and another £300 for the DVD burner, you're getting very close to the £700 I paid for my Panasonic. The amount you save in people's time, and the problems you'll have in sorting out software problems might well be worth it.

(Having said all that, I want to buy a PC-based DVD burner next, but that's just so I can gain a little more flexibility - I'll still use the DVD Recorder for most of the archiving I'm doing. I'd just like to be able to do better menus for the DVDs I'm burning.)

Thank you all so much for answering, and so thoughtfully and completely. You have saved me a great deal of time tinkering when the outcome would be disappointing anyway. And now I can sound ever so intelligent when I break the news to the professors.
(The computers are boring-old, Amy. Maybe this will give them the idea of buying fabulous new lovelies for us to play with!)

Cheers,
Elizabeth

"What's a modular G3?"

I can never find a decent phrase for this. By "modular" I mean something that comes in separate 'modules" (ie the monitor is separate from the main "box" ). In this context I mean any Mac with a G3 processor that isn't an iMac I guess. I'd love a better phrase. Any thoughts?

Quite a few people on the Mac discussion boards actually refer to their iMacs as G3s or "iMac G3s" on occasion, so I'm never sure which people mean when they use G3 alone, especially if they aren't serious macheads.

Cheers

Rod

Ah, so it's your own term and not a type of G3 of which I was hitherto unaware. That's a relief. As a certifiable machead, I would never refer to an iMac as a G3. It's like referring to a pony as a horse.

I'm glad we've been able to help Grace. h2g2 is such a useful place at times .