We present the first of our three-part look at MIDI on the Macintosh, so pay attention if you’ve ever wondered about music on the Mac. This week also brings the release of the latest and greatest version of Easy View, a look at a strange modem problem and its solution, and the scoop on how an FPU (floating point unit or math coprocessor) interacts with the LC III. Finally, information on how to get a free Microsoft Mail to SMTP gateway.
If you're a student heading home for the summer and you subscribe to the TidBITS LISTSERV, please cancel your subscription before leaving. It's only polite, and you can hop back on when you have access again
Information Electronics followed up on their recent announcement of a new SMTP mail gateway for Microsoft Mail with word that a limited-time evaluation version of the gateway is available for download, free of charge, from their support bulletin board
Double-sided Printing -- Several people wrote to warn against printing on the back of already-printed sheets of paper, as recommended in TidBITS #175. Joe Gurman relayed information from a repair person who claimed that some high-speed printers (the one in question was an older Ricoh engine used in the Talaris 1590 printstation) were more likely to jam when using reused paper because of changes in the paper when it was exposed to the high heat in the laser engine the first time through.
Another reader claimed that some laser printers contaminate the paper with small quantities of fuser oil, and reusing printed paper can cause this contaminant to migrate to places it doesn't belong, such as the rollers that grab the paper
A friend from Apple writes to clarify the LC III/FPU issue raised a while back in TidBITS #169.
I understand the following to be the case:
If there is no FPU on the motherboard, and none on the card, no problem.
If there is no FPU on the motherboard, and there is one on the card, the system uses the one on the card, albeit at 16 MHz.
If there is an FPU on the motherboard, and there is none on the card, the system uses the one on the motherboard, at 25 MHz.
If there is an FPU on the motherboard, and there is one on the card, the system uses the one on the motherboard, at 25 MHz.
The FPU on the motherboard, since it is physically linked to the CPU, takes priority, in a manner of speaking
I recently uploaded Easy View 2.32, the latest version of Akif Eyler's free structured text file browser. Easy View recognizes the following formats:
setext, including TidBITS
Info-Mac, comp.sys.mac.programmer, or similar digests
Mail collections: Internet, Navigator, Notebook, etc.
Text with "simple" format
Dictionaries
Plain text
However, there's nothing new in that list - I just wanted to grab the interest of people who haven't yet come out from under their rocks to try Easy View
Are you experiencing strange line-noise problems with your modem sometimes, but not all the time? I'd like to share a recent experience and perhaps spare some of you the full agony of troubleshooting such a problem.
One of my fellow user-group members and a user of my bulletin board, Memory Alpha, had been complaining that he could call CompuServe when his PowerBook's PowerPort/Gold modem was hooked to his upstairs phone jack, but when he plugged the PowerPort/Gold into his downstairs phone jack, his connections always failed; the screen quickly filled with garbage
by Shekhar Govind -- [email protected] editing by Craig O'Donnell -- [email protected] and Nick Rothwell -- [email protected]
This Mac-MIDI musical offering is organized in three movements, an introduction and discussion of MIDI, a look at MIDI software on the Macintosh, and finally, some information on MIDI hardware, some of it specific to the Mac