[john1]

Hi,

Someone gave me an apple.
Its a 'Starmax',
thought i would give it a go ... ,
seems to run up ok,
haven't done anything on it yet,
dunno how to work it yet.

I tried a floppy disk in the floppy drive to see if it worked.
Got something up, an icon, dunno how to access its files yet.

How do i eject the floppy disk ... theres no eject button ? ?


John

[emoxley]

Click on the icon of the floppy, and drag it to the trash can, and let it go. It will eject.
You can also single click the icon of the floppy, and hold down the apple key,and push the "Y" key. This is the command for "Put Away", and will eject it.
Also while on the desktop, look in the menus at top of screen. The menu, farthest to the right, should have an option of "Eject Disk".

To open the floppy, and access the files, double click the floppy icon..........
Good luck!

BTW........... The StarMax isn't really an Apple computer. It's a clone, they allowed to be built, and used the mac OS, a few years ago. Have fun learning it.........

[john1]

Hi emoxley,

Drag and drop it in the bin,
ok.
I take it that wont lose the floppy contents ?
Not that i care if it does.

First i would like to see the contents.

Double click the icon ... ok,
i'm sure i tried that already

John

[john1]

Hi emoxley,

yes, dragging the icon to the bin ejected the floppy.
I had been searching the 'Help' to find out how to eject,
but couldn't find it anywhere.

I double clicked the icon in the floppy window,
and it started doing the job on the floppy.

And it wouldn't stop. I tried all the keys ...
then i switched it off.
I don't want it doing anything yet.
Hope i haven't upset it.

Ive been told that pulling out the mouse plug
can damage an Apple ...
Is that true ?

John

[john1]

Well that didn't seem to bother it,
and,
it also ejects a floppy if theres one in when it starts.

Thats probbly normal.

Cheers, John

[emoxley]

Yes, that's normal...........
You can single click on floppy icon to highlight it, and go to "File" in menu at top, and click on "Open".
If it takes a long time, it may just be because it's an old and very slow machine (by today's standards). Whatever is on the floppy may be processor intense. Since a floppy only holds 1.4 mb, it can't be that too much is on it. Could be the floppy has been corrupted too, if it's an old floppy.
If you want to stop something that has started, you can push the "." (period key), while holding down the Command key (Apple key......beside the space bar). You may have to hold both down for a few seconds. Sometimes this works and sometimes it don't, depending on what you're trying to stop.

If you will, try making another floppy, using this computer, and see if it will open ok, after making it. If this works, you'll know the first floppy is bad. If it doesn't work, your floppy drive may be bad.

You can go into the system folder, to the preferences folder, and see if there are preferences for the floppy drive. If there are, drag them to trash can and throw them away. When you reboot, and try to use floppy drive again, it will automatically build a new set of preferences.

At your local library, you should be able to get a book called: Macs For Dummies. Not saying you are a dummy, but you know the kind of books I'm talking about. I think the author's name is David Pogue. It is a great book for helping newbie mac people learn the basics and troubleshoot.
Good luck! Keep us posted?

About unplugging keyboard..........
If it's usb, it's not a problem. But, if it's the round serial plug, you SHOULD ALWAYS turn off the computer, before unplugging it. They say it can cause problems............. In fact, always turn it off before unplugging or plugging in serial, parallel or scsi connections.

[john1]

Hi Emoxley,

Thanks for the support.
The guy that gave me it has been round, to see how i'm getting along
with it. He was most annoyed at the keyboard, complaining that it has
a key missing. Its the one he gave me with the machine, but it's a
'Compaq' keyboard, so he says he will have a look around for a proper
keyboard for it.

Apparently this key you mentioned is used a lot in normal use.

And i found out how to shut it down.
You have to go to the 'Special' tab, and choose 'Shutdown'
I didn't think it would have been anything special, i found it just
by looking around at everything i could.

I will reserve judgement, but so far this apple stuff seems weird,
maybe it will seem much better as i get more used to it.

I do like to swap (swop ?) stuff on my machines using floppies, but
so far i have been unable to get floppies to interact on either PC,
i will start looking at other formats like binary and such to see if
i can get to exchange information.

Surely this has already been addressed .... it must have been.
There must be a recognised way to use a floppy between Mac and PC.

Regards, John

( PS if i had built/designed a system where unplugging the mouse
could cause damage to the internal circuitry, i would regard that as
a design fault, and do something about it )

[DoubleHelix]

An Apple Mac computer is not called a PC. Are you trying to exchange data between your PC and the Mac? If so, PCs cannot read Mac formatted disks. Macs used to be able to read PC formatted disks, but I haven't used a Mac in a while.

This also depends on what type of information you're trying to share or transfer. Is it just text files? You can't share software (obviously).

[VegasACF]

PC = Personal Computer. Hence, an Apple Computer is a PC.

ADB peripherals (ADB stands for Apple Desktop Bus - the input circuitry built into "legacy" Macs and Mac clones, now replaced by USB), such as mice and keyboards can be unplugged and replugged, however usually you'll need to "jolt" the ADB system via a program such as Griffin's ADB Parser which is available at griffintechnology's archive/ftp site (sorry, but it seems URLs are disallowed on this forum -- really handy for a tech support help forum :roll: ). Stick a www in front of griffintechnology, a dot com after it and then the /archive/ftp bit and you'll get there. I think the application is near the bottom of the page.

As for ADB being "flawed," perhaps some history is in order. ADB, developed in the mid 1980s by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, was first released on the Apple //gs and was used on every Macintosh until the USB standard was adopted. It uses only a single pin for data, making it incredibly inexpensive to implement.

All traffic on the bus is driven by the host computer, which sends out commands to read or write data. Devices are not allowed to use the bus unless the computer first requests it. These requests take the form of single-byte strings. The upper four bits contain the address, the ID of one device on the chain (allowing up to 16 devices to exist on a single bus). The next two bits specify one of four commands, and the final two bits indicate one of four registers. The commands are talk, listen, flush and reset.

If the mouse was known to be at address $3, the computer periodically sends out a message on the bus asking the device to talk and return the contents of the register. To a mouse, this means, "tell me if the button has been clicked." This is followed by an additional two commands asking for the contents of registers one and two, the X and Y movements.

Device addresses are set to default values when reset. All keyboards are $2, all mice $3, etc. When the computer is first powered on the ADB device driver sends out the talk commands, and if no answer is forthcoming the computer marks it dead and doesn't bother polling it later. This is why when you unplug and replug a device it (often) does not operate.

One other tidbit, the ADB cable also includes a pin labeled PSW which is attached directly to the power supply of the host computer. This allows a key on the keyboard to start up the machine without the ADB software needing to interpret the signal.

ADB cables are physically identical to S-Video cables.

There's a lot more to this simple system, but that's probably enough for now. If you have further questions about it let me know.

ADB was great for one other reason that I had a lot of experience with while head of tech support for a cross-platform music software company. While PC guys were dealing with ISA cards and the conflicts that come therefrom for any dongles their software might have required, Mac guys just had to plug it into our mouse/keyboard cable, jolt the ADB chain and get back to work. It sure was a pleasure to have a Mac user on the other end of a tech support call!

[john1]

thank you VegasACF,
still typing,
but i am slow at typing.
John

[john1]

Hi DoubleHelix,
Yes, this tallies with some of the stuff ive been told elsewhere,
that Macs can read diskettes from (modular)PCs, but that (modular)PCs
cannot read the Mac diskettes.
And no i wouldn't expect software to run,
but i would expect the A drive to list something from the floppy.
Saying 'unformatted' is misleading.

Hi VegasACF,
yes, an Apple personal computer is of course a personal computer
just as much as many others, but the term is largely accepted as
meaning the modular type of machine which can be assembled by someone
with little expert knowledge, cos the various units share common
compatability.
The Apple machines as you probably know have a different philosophy.
I realise that it is incorrect to use the term in that way,
but i think that its accepted widely, even though its known to be
incorrect. ( if i'm wrong in that, someone will soon say so )

About the single-wire device line, i actually understood most of that.
Maybe not all of it, but most of it.
It sounds a little bit like a sort of SCSI maybe.

I can understand that if the device does not respond to a poll, then
it would be ignored, that seems reasonable.
But i was told removing a device could damage the host machine, from
what you say this does not seem to be the case.

Yes i am very interested in this system as i have just been given a
'StarMax' and i am most intrigued by this whole setup.

Could you explain what you mean by "jolt the ADB chain and get back
to work" it sounds like some sort of improvised re-set.

Also i see this was your first post, i hope to see you about.

Regards, John

[VegasACF]

Originally Posted by john1

I can understand that if the device does not respond to a poll, then it would be ignored, that seems reasonable. But i was told removing a device could damage the host machine, from what you say this does not seem to be the case.

Poppycock. The person who told you this is uninformed. I did it literally twenty plus times per day testing different ADB dongles without restarting the computer (that would have added hours to my work day!). It will do nothing to either the peripheral device or the host computer.

Originally Posted by john1

Yes i am very interested in this system as i have just been given a 'StarMax' and i am most intrigued by this whole setup.

Just be aware that this machine is ancient by today's standards. It's most likely a 603 PPC (or maybe a 604) processor in the 200 MHz range. Macs have gone through three major processor upgrades since this CPU was used (G3, G4 and now G5), as well as vast processor speed improvements. I don't know what OS you'll be able to run on it, but I wouldn't think anything much beyond OS 7.5 or maybe OS 8.X. The reason I'm saying this is that you shouldn't judge the world of Macintosh computing by the example you have before you. The StarMax represents a snapshot in time, not the current state of affairs.

Originally Posted by john1

Could you explain what you mean by "jolt the ADB chain and get back to work" it sounds like some sort of improvised re-set.

It's not really an improvised thing. If you use the application that I pointed you towards in my first (yes, it is my first) post you'll find that it will do this reset for you. The software was developed for people, such as I once was, that must unplug/replug devices from their ADB chain with regularity.

There also was a program called MouseJolt that was actually a bit handier (you just launched it, it did its job and quit on its own), but I am unable to find a working link to it. Perhaps I'll fire up one of my old ADB Macs and see if I have it lying around. If I do I'll upload it to my server and let you know.

In any case the program I mentioned before, and would love to post a direct link to, but am prohibited by this forum from so doing, will do the job for you.

Originally Posted by john1

Also i see this was your first post, i hope to see you about.

Thanks. Pleasure to be here, even if the tag line under this room is a bit derogatory. Whatever. I won't take their jealousy personally.

[john1]

Hi VegasACF,

Thanks for enlightening me on the forgiving nature of the ADB serial line, i pretty much thought it was safe anyway.
After several failed attempts here and there, including www.griffintechnology.com/archive/ftp i finally managed to download "mouse-jolt-10.hqx" from http://smokeping.planetmirror.com/pub/info-mac/cfg/ its only about 17kb i hope its the right one.
I dunno if the StarMax will read it from a floppy made on this desktop, but even if it won't i will try to get the StarMax to get on line and download it direct.
Yes i realise it is a very old machine, and i don't take it as a current example, but it will help me to get familiar with the Apple way of going about computer-handling, well hopefully. I am afraid my experience to date is Win95 then Win98se. And a small amount of assembler way back in the late seventies to eightes, when the only computers i saw were home made things that used televisions for monitors.

"the tag line under this room" dunno what this means, but if anything looks out of place, or annoying, i will see what can be done to put it right.

Best Regards, John

[john1]

And i am guessing, from your time difference that you might be around 'Hawaii'
Hope its nice out there !!

John

[MSM Hobbes]

VegasACF - greetings, great/excellent comments.

Curious tho'... you mentioned twice that to the effect that URL's are not allowed in this forum . I really do not believe that posting a URL to a site that is done in a helpful manner, and that allows s/w d/l's is prohibited - unless financial gain is to be made by the poster/etc., or its to an obscene/vulgur/pornography/etc. site [PM me w/ those... ] Again, to my knowledge, many here, myself included, have posted many URL's to sites that have hopefully benefited others - I believe the griffintech site that you alluded to is no exception... http://www.griffintechnology.com/archive/ftp/ If this truly is not allowed, would love to see an explanation for clarification. If ever in doubt, and if come across really helpful sites/products, include a post in the Review section - however,,, would be interesting to see how many Apple people would look there for an Apple-related post/item.

Oh, btw, while I agree that an Apple is indeed a personal computer, and rightly debateable that its even more personable than anything else , for whatever reason, the moniker "PC" pretty much denotes all non-Apple computers.