MikeRivers

Originally posted by Dylan Walters Check out the nc6230 if you really want a nice system. The graphics are dedicated, unlike most budget PC's The main drawback compared to the nc6230 is that my video card is shared, meaning that the system processor and RAM handle the video tasks. Doesn't "dedicated" graphics mean that the CPU and its RAM aren't used for graphics? Or am I mixing metaphors here? It's hard to keep up with all of this newfangled cheepcut technology. It doesn't seem to have a DVD writer. I'd think that would be essential these days, particularly if you do recording on the internal disk drive. I, too, would like to find a new notebook computer but once I think I've found the right one, it becomes extinct before I can buy it. ;(

Originally posted by FunkyLaptop I have never even heard, until now, of a PC Card that needed its own power supply... wow. I have an Adaptec Firewire PCMCIA card that has a power jack on it, but for the $20 it cost me, they didn't even include the power adapter. I can understand the concern about drawing extra power from the laptop, though. They're getting down to fleapower motherboards and are getting more battery time out of smaller batteries (users like lighter) but there isn't a lot of reserve there. But speaking of bus powering of outboard stuff, switching on the phantom power on a TASCAM US-122 when connected to my laptop computer would cause the supply voltage to to the US-122 (through the USB port) to drop low enough so it would shut down, and I had to unplug and re-plug it to get it initialized again. If the phantom switch was on when the US-122 was plugged in, it would come up OK,, but I guess the initial inrush current for the DC-DC converter was too much for the little laptop. I didn't have the same problelm when plugging it into a desktop computer. Out of curiosity, I opened up a USB cable, put a 0.1 ohm resistor in series with the power lead and connected an oscilloscope across it to measure the transient current. It peaked at over 3 amps for about 10 milliseconds. I belive the USB spec allows for 500 mA.

Originally posted by Anderton Translation: If you're using a laptop, you're probably stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port and an external AC adapter for your FireWire accessory. Gee, and you used to be such a Mac guy. Most if not all Mac laptops have a 6-pin Firewire connector. At least last month.

Originally posted by amplayer ICan you share with us some of what type of things you were modifying in real time. Like, are you swapping between loops, effects, modifying filters, etc? I was kind of curious about that, too. Since Craig's an honest sort, he probably did have the knobs active, but in a stage performance, I'd probalby not risk anything but the vocal and guitar actually being live (or was there a turntable there, too? I wasn't sure). If I'm not mistaken, it seems like it's more of an ad for Live than any of the hardware.I suspect that more than an ad (the polite term is "demonstration") it was just a way to attract people to the Presonus booth where they might see some stuff they'd be interested in. I thought the FaderPort (1 channel DAW controller) was pretty neat. Now if Craig was slamming that around they'd have a real demo.

Cool moves for an old guy.